After scoring his fourth title at the 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix, Max Verstappen opened up about questioning his future with Red Bull Racing.
Max Verstappen secured his fourth consecutive title in the 22nd round of the 2024 season in Las Vegas as he increased his lead in the Championship to 63 points ahead of Lando Norris.
The Dutchman received a lot of praise for being able to win the Championship even without the fastest car, which he arguably previously had in 2022 and 2023.
While some F1 fans still keep pointing out that the four-time World Champion had the fastest car in the first couple of races of the season, it is now forgotten how challenging the situation inside Red Bull was back then.
The team principal, Christian Horner, had his own controversy and was undergoing an investigation; at the same time, there was a power struggle between him and Helmut Marko, who was at one point under threat of being let go.
Max Verstappen had to step into all this and threaten with his own potential exit, which was totally possible and on the table as the Mercedes team principal, Toto Wolff, openly expressed interest in taking the 27-year-old as a replacement for Lewis Hamilton in 2025.
The Dutchman managed to overcome all the problems, pull the team together, and outperform his own car to bring home his "best title" so far, as he called it. However, he admitted after the race in Las Vegas that he was on the edge of quitting at one point:
"I think in your life, every year there are always thoughts going through your head from, 'How long do I still want to do this? Where do I want to do this? How do I want to do this?'"
"There are things in your private life that happen, of course. In your racing life, there are always things that you have to deal with and think about. But that's fine."
"I think, in general, I'm quite relaxed about these things because it's very important to split your private life and racing life. But it's fine to have these thoughts in your head about what you want to do."
"At the same time, I'm also not someone that makes very drastic decisions. And I'm just very happy where I'm at the moment."
"I'm very loyal to the team. I appreciate, of course, what they have done for me from picking me up out of F3 and giving me an F1 seat and then going through all these emotions over all the years with these key people in the team."
Verstappen also had a tough period with his own race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, after the 2024 Hungarian Grand Prix when they didn't talk at all for a couple of days.
However, as Lambiase revealed, they then cleared the air ahead of the 2024 Belgian Grand Prix, pushed through the tough times, and now have an even better relationship. Verstappen added:
"So, when there are tough times, it's very easy to say goodbye or forget about it or ignore it. But I think it's actually way more important to actually face them and go through it together and deal with it and just try to move on from there and focus back, of course, on the performance side of things and have fun out there.
"That's, at the end, the most important. If you're not having fun, then there's no point to continue."
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