Max Verstappen Reveals He’s Mentoring a 15-Year-Old McLaren Junior Driver Amid His Own Red Bull Uncertainty

• Max Verstappen has revealed he is personally mentoring 15-year-old Dries Van Langendonck, a McLaren development driver, as he tries to help guide the teenager toward Formula 1.
• The project comes as Verstappen himself faces growing questions over his own Red Bull future, with a contract clause now allowing him to leave the team for 2027.
• Verstappen refused to give a direct answer on his plans ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix, saying “there’s nothing to say” about reports linking him to McLaren.

Max Verstappen has signed 15-year-old Dries Van Langendonck, a driver in McLaren’s development programme, to his own racing team, and says he is personally helping guide the teenager’s path toward Formula 1, even as questions swirl over his own future at Red Bull.

Verstappen has raced for the Milton Keynes-based team for ten years, winning four titles between 2021 and 2024, but Red Bull’s dominance has faded under the new regulations introduced this season. Reliability issues and a pair of crashes linked to the same rear wing problem, one in Austria and one at the British Grand Prix, have left the team behind the frontrunners and fuelled speculation about whether Verstappen will see out a contract that runs to the end of 2028.

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A Big Talent Already Spotted

Speaking at Spa ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix, Verstappen explained what drew him to back Van Langendonck, who is part of McLaren’s junior driver setup and racing in Formula 4 this season.

“Dries has been a big talent for a long time already in go-karting and I think you can spot quite quickly when someone is a little bit more special than someone else, and I think that has carried on with what he’s doing right now in Formula 4,” Verstappen said.

“That’s why I think it’s just very exciting to try and help him, guide him. Of course, hand in hand from McLaren’s side as well, to make the right decisions for his future. I mean, he wants to get to Formula 1 and I’m just trying to make sure that will happen in the future. It’s just honestly a very exciting project to be part of.”

Helping a Future Rival Up the Ladder

The arrangement puts Verstappen in the unusual position of helping develop a young driver tied to McLaren, a team he has himself been linked with joining. His own management held a meeting with McLaren earlier in the season to discuss a potential future move, a story that dominated the build-up to the British Grand Prix and has continued to follow him to Belgium.

Van Langendonck’s route into McLaren’s junior programme has followed the usual path through karting before a step up to single-seaters this year. Verstappen made clear that any decisions about the 15-year-old’s next moves will still run through McLaren, even as he takes on a hands-on role in shaping the teenager’s early career.

Asked directly about those reports, Verstappen gave nothing away. “There’s nothing to say,” he said. “I don’t want to say yes and no, and this and that about my future. I said already many times that if there was something new, I would say it myself.”

Fixing the Car, Not Dwelling on It

Rather than address the speculation around his future in detail, Verstappen focused on the work going on behind the scenes at Red Bull to stop the kind of mechanical failure that ended his British Grand Prix, when a rear wing defect sent him spinning into the gravel in the closing stages.

“Now we’re just looking to the future trying to fix current issues that we have on the car, but that’s an open discussion,” Verstappen said. “Yes, sometimes you get a little bit disappointed or upset after a race, but for example after Silverstone, you go home and you reset. On Wednesday I was back at the factory and then you prepare again for the weekends ahead. That’s how I’ve been operating in all the years together.

“And of course, some years are just a little bit more competitive than others, but in terms of my approach and how we work as a team, nothing really changes. People come and go, I think that’s sometimes also part of the process. Sometimes you want people to stay potentially, yes, but I think that’s just how life is, how sport is as well. You just have to carry on, try to find new talents. That’s what you look at all the time and that’s what we do.”

The Clause Hanging Over Spa

Verstappen’s contract with Red Bull reportedly includes a performance clause allowing him to leave for 2027 if he is outside the top two in the standings by the summer break. Seventh in the championship after a difficult run of results, Verstappen has already reached that trigger point. He has given no indication he intends to use it.

That technicality, combined with a season of reliability problems, means the noise around his future is only likely to grow louder across the Belgian and Hungarian Grands Prix, the final two rounds before Formula 1’s summer break.

Building Something Away From the Cockpit

Whatever Verstappen decides about his own next move, his answers at Spa suggested a driver more interested in talking about Van Langendonck’s future than his own. The 15-year-old has already impressed in karting before stepping up to Formula 4, and Verstappen made clear he sees the mentoring role as separate from any tension between Red Bull and McLaren.

For a driver whose own career has been defined by four world titles and, more recently, uncertainty over where it goes next, guiding a 15-year-old through the early steps of his own journey offers something Verstappen described in simple terms: “It’s just honestly a very exciting project to be part of.”

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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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