As McLaren have made major waves on the IndyCar side, shockingly cutting ties with Christian Lundgaard, who is third in the championship standings with two victories this season, to make way for Scott Dixon, while also dropping Nolan Siegel to bring back Felix Rosenqvist, the McLaren Formula 1 team have been at the forefront of even bigger silly season rumors.
With four-time world champion Max Verstappen no longer having a realistic path to the top two in F1 driver standings by the upcoming summer break, it has been reported that he can activate a clause in his contract to leave Red Bull post-2026, despite being under contract with the team until 2028.
Given all of the turnover at Red Bull over the past three seasons, with the most recent big-name departure being that of Verstappen's longtime race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase, the team is simply not the same as it was during Verstappen's era of dominance, and the performance has been absolutely nowhere close either.
With added rumors of Piastri growing frustrated with McLaren, the latest speculation suggests that McLaren could be preparing to make an offer to Verstappen, if they haven't already done so. And they reportedly have the financial backing to pull it off, should the Dutchman choose the make the sensational switch.
We have seen, time and time again, that Zak Brown is willing to stop at nothing when he smells blood in the water, and the Verstappen/Red Bull partnership has been walking wounded for quite some time. With Lambiase on his way to McLaren himself, there could be added incentive for all parties involved to complete the blockbuster move.
Max Verstappen "joined" McLaren before, sort of
But it wouldn't be the first time Verstappen has "joined" McLaren, although the first didn't happen in the traditional driver lineup sense.
In 2022, Verstappen became just the second driver in Formula 1 history to win back-to-back races after starting 10th or lower in both, and it has't been done since.
The other? Bruce McLaren himself, more than six decades prior.
Verstappen won the Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring from 10th on the grid, following a technical issue in Q3, and he won the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa from 14th, after he was penalized due to a predetermined engine change. He had been the race's fastest qualifier before the planned grid drop.
As for McLaren, he won just two races across the 1959 and 1960 seasons, but they were the 1959 finale and the 1960 opener.
He closed out the 1959 season with a victory in the United States Grand Prix at Sebring International Raceway from 10th on the grid, and he opened up the 1960 campaign with a win in the Grand Prix of Argentina at Autodromo Oscar Alfredo Galvez from 13th.
Verstappen finds himself third on the all-time F1 wins list with 71 career victories, including an all-time record 37 in seasons when his team did not win the constructor championship. He led all of F1 in victories each year from 2021 to 2025, and he did so in 2021, 2024, and 2025 despite Red Bull not winning the constructor title in any of those seasons.
But now for the real question that everyone is asking: will Verstappen join the 2027 McLaren Formula 1 team's driver lineup alongside longtime friend and former title rival Lando Norris? The fact that this is even a question would have seemed bizarre just one month ago. Now, not so much.
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