Red Bull are already building a safety net in case Max Verstappen walks away, and Sky Sports pundits believe Oliver Bearman is the name at the top of the list.
Silly season conversations at the top of the grid rarely stay confined to one team, and the latest to spill over involves a driver who was never supposed to be part of the Verstappen story at all. According to comments made on Sky Sports F1, commentator David Croft said Red Bull are “keeping very close tabs” on the Haas driver as a contingency plan should the four-time champion trigger the exit clause in his contract.
The timing is pointed. Verstappen’s retirement-ending DNF at the British Grand Prix has already made it mathematically impossible for him to enter the summer break inside the top two of the drivers’ championship, meaning the performance-linked failsafe in his deal is now active. Team principal Laurent Mekies, who signed Bearman to the Ferrari Academy during his own time at Maranello, is understood to see the 21-year-old as a realistic option if Red Bull needs to plan beyond its current line-up.
Yet, looking deeper at why Bearman specifically, the picture becomes less about Red Bull’s needs and more about his own shrinking options elsewhere.
The Route To Ferrari Has Quietly Closed
Speaking on the same broadcast, Martin Brundle was blunt about Bearman’s position within his parent team. With Charles Leclerc newly re-signed and Lewis Hamilton showing no signs of slowing down at 41, Brundle suggested the Haas driver’s path to a Ferrari race seat has been “cut off” for the foreseeable future. Jenson Button went further, urging Bearman’s management to start exploring “other teams and other possibilities” rather than waiting on a seat that may not open for years.
That reasoning is what makes Mekies’ interest so logical. Bearman has impressed since arriving at Haas, extracting performances from one of the grid’s smaller budgets that have not gone unnoticed in the paddock, and a team principal who already knows his character from the Ferrari junior programme represents a shortcut most manufacturers do not get with an outside signing.
What It Means For The Verstappen Saga
None of this confirms Verstappen is leaving. Mekies has publicly maintained that the priority remains building a car competitive enough to keep his championship-winning driver in Milton Keynes, and Oscar Piastri is still viewed as the more heavily backed name to replace him should a McLaren move materialise instead. But the willingness to have Bearman on the radar shows Red Bull is no longer treating a Verstappen departure as a distant hypothetical.
A Different Kind Of Contingency
It is also a notable departure from how Red Bull has traditionally covered itself against a seat becoming vacant. The Milton Keynes junior pipeline already has Isack Hadjar established at the senior team and Liam Lawson racing for Racing Bulls, with the sister squad built specifically to prepare drivers for exactly this scenario. Reaching outside that system to a Ferrari-contracted junior would be an unusual move, and a telling sign of how seriously the paddock is now taking the possibility of Verstappen driving for somebody else in 2027.
The message from within the team is clear: whatever happens with Verstappen this summer, Red Bull do not intend to be caught short on the driver market again.
