Verstappen on Newey and Wheatley leaving: 'That would have been better for Red Bull'

Max Verstappen has said it "would have been better" for Red Bull if "things had stayed as they were". It has been a turbulent 2024 for the Austrian team, with allegations of misconduct from team principal Christian Horner surrounding and unsettling the team before the season got underway, and the key departures of Adrian Newey and Jonathan Wheatley have seen a decline in the team's performance.

Earlier in the year, before these departures and the downward spiral of Red Bull occurred, Max Verstappen stressed how important it was for key figures of the team to remain in place. However, the tumultuous off-season at the Milton-Keynes-based team resulted in a lot of key members of the Red Bull Racing team leaving their posts to find other opportunities.

Since the beginning of 2024, Newey, Wheatley and Will Courtenay have announced their departures. Reminded by Motorsport.com of his statement on the importance of retaining staff, Verstappen laughs: "That didn't quite work out!", also adding how he would have preferred everyone to have stayed, reiterating his earlier statements.

But the Dutchman also recognises that people cannot be stopped once they have decided to leave. The three-time world champion stresses that it is better to let people go if they are no longer satisfied or not quite getting what they want. "Then maybe it is also better that they take up another challenge. Even though for the whole team, for the collective, it would have been better if things stayed as they were," he clarified.

However, the championship leader sees the departure of prominent team members, to some extent, as a logical development that can be seen in all sports, still hugely positive that his team can move forward and continue to progress: Some people you cannot stop because they get such a huge offer from other teams that the [money] also plays a role anyway," Verstappen said.

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