How many more of these can Verstappen take?
A second rear-wing failure in three races has the four-time champion talking about walking away from the weekend entirely. His manager’s deadline on 2027 is closer than Red Bull would like.
Verstappen won’t confirm anything about next year, and that in itself is starting to say plenty. Every question about his 2027 plans this season has been met with a version of the same answer: not now, not here, not something he’s willing to discuss mid-weekend.
Silverstone made the subtext impossible to ignore. Already frustrated with how the car was handling and putting power down all weekend, Verstappen’s race ended when a rear wing failure sent him spinning into the gravel at Stowe — the second time in three race weekends the same mechanism has put him off the track, after a near-identical incident in qualifying at the Red Bull Ring.
“At this point I just want to go home and not think about Formula 1.”
It wasn’t just the wing. Team principal Laurent Mekies has openly acknowledged that drivability — how predictably the power unit responds through a corner — has been a limiting factor for the team all season, a striking admission from an outfit that has won four consecutive drivers’ titles with the same driver in the car.
None of it changes the calendar. Verstappen’s contract with Red Bull runs to the end of 2028, but paddock reporting has pointed consistently to an exit option and a summer deadline for a decision on his future, tied to whether the car is sorted by the time the sport reaches its break. Two rear-wing failures and a power unit he still doesn’t fully trust is not the evidence Red Bull wanted to hand him two weeks out from Spa.
For now Verstappen sits seventh in the championship on 76 points, a gap that owes more to reliability than raw pace — he was running third at Silverstone when the wing failed, and had looked competitive on it all weekend. Whether that pace is enough to keep him patient through another summer of fixes is the question Red Bull can’t afford to get wrong.