Webber Dismisses ‘Fiction’ Around Piastri as Verstappen’s Red Bull Future Comes Under Fresh Scrutiny

• Piastri’s manager Mark Webber has dismissed talk of a seat swap with Max Verstappen as “fiction,” backed publicly by Piastri and McLaren CEO Zak Brown.
• Verstappen’s Red Bull future is under fresh scrutiny after a second rear wing failure in as many race weekends left him with a ninth straight race without a win.
• A performance clause means Verstappen is now eligible to leave Red Bull for 2027 after the Silverstone result confirmed he won’t be in the championship’s top two before the summer break.

Oscar Piastri’s manager Mark Webber has pushed back hard on speculation linking his driver to a move away from McLaren, calling the chatter around a potential seat swap with Max Verstappen “fiction.”

The denial comes as Verstappen’s own position at Red Bull is drawing fresh scrutiny following a second rear wing failure in as many race weekends, one that has left the four-time champion needing a big second half of the season to convince himself he is in the right place.

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PIASTRI RESPONDS TO THE RUMORS

Reports have circulated that Verstappen’s camp held informal talks about a possible future at McLaren, adding to speculation that first surfaced with the idea of a straight swap between Verstappen and Piastri. Piastri, who holds a multi-year McLaren deal, addressed the rumors himself at the British Grand Prix weekend, choosing his words carefully but leaving no doubt about where he stands.

“I’ve got a contract in place, multiple reassurances that the team are very happy with me and I’m very happy with the team,” Piastri said.

WEBBER CALLS THE SWAP TALK ‘NONSENSE’

Webber, the nine-time Grand Prix winner who now manages Piastri, went further than his driver in shutting down the rumors when he spoke to RACER, choosing blunter language than the careful diplomacy typically offered by drivers still mid-contract.

“Oscar is contracted to McLaren for the foreseeable future,” Webber said. “Talk of him agitating to leave is nonsense.”

“There has been a lot of fiction written about him and other teams. McLaren have repeatedly said they want him for the long term and Oscar is focused on that.”

McLaren CEO Zak Brown offered his own version of the same message, treating the Verstappen links as an inevitable part of the sport’s rumor mill rather than anything the team is entertaining behind closed doors.

“They’re rumours,” Brown said. “I’m very happy with my two racing drivers, Lando and Oscar. I think anytime a name like Max is thrown around, people get pretty excited, a four-time World Champion, but I’m very happy with our driver line-up.”

Between them, Piastri, Webber and Brown offered three separate denials inside the same weekend, a level of coordinated pushback that suggests McLaren wanted the story closed down quickly rather than left to simmer through the summer break. The idea of a straight swap, Verstappen into Piastri’s seat and Piastri into Verstappen’s, has circulated in various forms for months, but the fact that McLaren’s driver, his manager and the team’s chief executive all felt the need to address it again points to how persistent the speculation has become.

WHY VERSTAPPEN’S FUTURE IS BACK IN THE CONVERSATION

The renewed speculation follows a painful run for Verstappen. He was set for a podium at Silverstone, running third with four laps to go, when a rear wing fault sent him into the gravel. It was the second time in consecutive race weekends that the same failure has struck his car, after a similar issue ended his push for pole position in Austria the week before.

The Silverstone retirement was Verstappen’s third DNF of the season and stretched his winless run to nine races, a run of results that sits awkwardly next to his reputation as the driver most likely to extract a result his car does not deserve. Verstappen has described the recurring wing fault as “becoming dangerous for myself.”

Verstappen’s contract with Red Bull runs until the end of 2028, but it contains performance-related clauses that can open the door to an early exit depending on how the season unfolds. The Silverstone result confirmed that Verstappen, currently seventh in the world championship, will not be inside the top two when the summer break begins after the Belgian and Hungarian Grands Prix, triggering one of those clauses.

Sources say Verstappen’s management has spoken with McLaren about a possible future move, and with other teams as well, though such conversations are common practice in Formula 1 and do not by themselves signal an imminent switch. Teams and driver management routinely take soundings on the market to keep their options open, whether or not a move is close to happening. For a driver of Verstappen’s standing, those conversations will always draw attention regardless of how preliminary they are, which helps explain why a single reported meeting has generated weeks of speculation rather than fading away.

The uncertainty is not helped by the timing. A driver assessing his options in the middle of a difficult run, rather than after a title-winning season, invites more scrutiny of his motives, even when the driver himself has said little publicly about what he actually wants to do next.

THE MATH THAT KEEPS POINTING BACK TO RED BULL

For all the noise, the practical options for Verstappen remain narrow. McLaren have Norris and Piastri under contract, and both Webber and Brown have now said as much publicly. Mercedes have locked in George Russell alongside Kimi Antonelli for next year. Ferrari are set with Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton. Any of those teams would need to break an existing driver contract to fit Verstappen in, and there is no sign of that happening in the short term.

Red Bull remains the team that brought Verstappen into Formula 1 and the only one where he has won a Grand Prix or a world title. The relationship still runs deep even after the frustration of back-to-back mechanical failures, and Red Bull have shown before that they can recover from a difficult stretch. Verstappen won six of the last nine races in 2025 after a slow start, closing what had been a large deficit before the title went to Norris.

That history is part of why staying put remains the likeliest outcome, even with Verstappen clearly unhappy with his current machinery. Red Bull’s task now is to fix the wing problem, keep developing the car, and give their driver a reason to stop looking elsewhere. The McLaren camp’s public denials this week only reinforce how few realistic alternatives actually exist for him elsewhere on the grid.

None of that guarantees Verstappen stays. Contracts in Formula 1 have been broken before when a driver and team both decide it serves them, and performance clauses exist precisely so a dominant driver is not trapped in an uncompetitive car for years at a time. But for a move away from Red Bull to happen this year, a seat would have to open up somewhere it currently shows no sign of doing, which is the gap between the speculation and the reality of the driver market as it stands today.

Verstappen, for his part, is not being rushed into a decision, which buys Red Bull time to make its case before the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps on July 17-19 and the rest of the season beyond it. Whether that time is enough will depend as much on what Red Bull’s engineers can fix in the coming weeks as on anything said in the paddock about contracts and rumors.

For now, the clearest outcome of this week’s speculation is not any change in Verstappen’s plans, but three fresh public statements from inside the McLaren camp confirming their own driver line-up is settled. Verstappen’s next move, if one comes at all, remains exactly where it was before the rumors started: undecided, and largely out of his rivals’ hands.

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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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