Max Verstappen faces the biggest challenge of his career in 2026

Max Verstappen ended the 2025 F1 season on a high with three consecutive victories in his Red Bull. The Dutch driver would still, however, be handed his first defeat in an F1 championship battle at the hands of Lando Norris.

For the most part in 2025, Max Verstappen was not really seen as a contender for the driver’s championship title. The Red Bull was just too slow and not much of a challenger compared to McLaren.

Then came the second half of the season, and things started clicking. The end-of-season momentum was in Max Verstappen’s favor, but as he heads to 2026, there is not only an air of uncertainty but also the possibility of the Dutch driver potentially facing the biggest challenge of his career. Let’s take a look.

The Red Bull could potentially be a disaster

In the eyes of many, the Red Bull under Max Verstappen in the last couple of years has been a bit of a beast and hard to tame. The previous 18 months have been hard when it comes to finding the sweet spot in that car.

At the same time, though, the Red Bull continued to be a podium contender and a race winner in the hands of Max Verstappen. For the 2026 F1 season, the Dutch driver is potentially looking at a possibility where that might not be the case. The RBPT (Red Bull Powertrain) is producing its first-ever power unit for the new regulations, and fundamentally, it’s a bit of a stretch to expect the operation to nail its first-ever power unit.

It is a reasonable expectation that the first iteration from Red Bull Powertrain will not be the class of the field, and that could drop the squad in the pecking order.

There is a strong possibility that Max Verstappen might not even have a car capable of consistently fighting for podiums in 2026. How he tackles that reality will be intriguing to watch.

Regime change and a lack of familiar faces at Red Bull

The Red Bull operation in 2026 is going to look a bit different from what we have become used to. More importantly, many of the familiar faces Max Verstappen was used to are no longer present.

Helmut Marko has left, Christian Horner is gone, and there’s a question mark over how Gianpiero Lambiase manages the next season, but it does appear that things in the background are not the best for him.

At the same time, the Red Bull regime has changed. The Dutch driver knew what to expect from the Christian Horner regime, which centered around him.

What does the team look like under Laurent Mekies as he becomes more and more comfortable in his role? That’s a bit of a question mark for the Dutch driver.

Max Verstappen might have to make a crucial call on his future

Amongst all of this, by mid-2026, Max Verstappen might have a crucial call to make about his future. As has been the case in F1, during a regulations change period, more often than not, the team that nails everything at the start ends up holding on to that lead for a while. We’ve seen that with Red Bull during the ground-effect era, and the same was true for Mercedes as well.

By mid-2026, Verstappen will have to make the biggest call of his career, where he decides what he wants to do in the future. Whether he sticks around at Red Bull and rebuilds the team or he packs his bags and makes the move to potentially a team like Mercedes, where he’s already developed strong relations with Toto Wolff.

Conclusion

Max Verstappen’s career has been fraught with challenges of various kinds. He’s overcome Lewis Hamilton in a tough year-long championship battle, beaten drivers to the title in a car that maybe others would not have won championships in, and he’s been a part of an outfit for more than a decade.

While all of this is true, what he faces from 2026 onwards is a different kind of challenge. It’s a challenge of unfamiliarity; one that could define the trajectory of his career for the next few years.

Sometimes a driver’s legacy comes down to the calls he makes at crucial points in his career. Verstappen is going to be in that position in 2026.