Max Verstappen doesn’t have to sign a single document to start shaping somebody else’s contract talk. Oscar Piastri is contracted to McLaren until at least the end of 2027, has finished on the podium twice already this season, and has given no public indication he wants to be anywhere else. Yet for the past fortnight he has fielded more questions about his own future than most drivers who are actually on the market — because Verstappen’s name keeps being mentioned in the same breath as his.
According to comments given to RACER and repeated widely across the paddock on Friday, Piastri’s manager Mark Webber moved to shut the speculation down. “Oscar is contracted to McLaren for the foreseeable future,” the former Grand Prix winner said. “Talk of him agitating to leave is nonsense. There has been a lot of fiction written about him and other teams. McLaren have repeatedly said they want him for the long term and Oscar is focused on that.” For a fanbase who watched Piastri and Lando Norris deliver the team’s most successful campaign since the 1990s, a manager having to publicly deny his own driver wants out will feel like an odd place for 2026 to have arrived at.
Yet look at why the rumour keeps resurfacing, and it becomes clear this was never really about Piastri at all.
Why Verstappen’s Name Keeps Resurfacing At Woking
The noise traces back to Max Verstappen, whose management is understood to have held informal talks with McLaren chief executive Zak Brown, reportedly instigated by the four-time champion himself at the Austrian Grand Prix. Verstappen’s Red Bull contract contains an exit clause tied to his championship position, and with the Dutchman languishing seventh in the standings, and mathematically unable to climb above George Russell in second before the summer break, that clause is on course to become active. Any move for Verstappen to McLaren would require the team to displace either Piastri or Norris, which is precisely why Piastri has fielded the bulk of the questions — he, not Norris, is seen in the paddock as the more swappable half of the pairing.
The timing hasn’t helped. Unrelated announcements around Scott Dixon’s move to McLaren’s IndyCar operation set off a fresh wave of speculation early this week that the team had a bigger reveal coming, and social media quickly pointed that speculation at Piastri’s F1 seat.
The Maths That Makes A Straight Swap Unlikely
Zak Brown has been consistent in public, insisting talks with Verstappen’s camp “didn’t go anywhere” and that he remains “very happy” with his current pairing. Both Piastri and Norris are contracted beyond this season, both are performing, and team principal Andrea Stella has already rejected suggestions of a straight Piastri-for-Verstappen swap once this year. Verstappen’s own season has been complicated further by a rear wing reliability crisis now under FIA scrutiny, hardly the platform from which to force a McLaren seat open. Webber’s intervention reads less like crisis management and more like a manager tired of a rumour with no contractual mechanism behind it.
What It Means For McLaren’s Driver Line-Up
Norris himself spent Saturday celebrating last year’s title at Goodwood rather than fielding exit questions, a reminder of how settled his own position looks by comparison. Until Verstappen’s contract situation actually resolves one way or the other, Piastri will keep absorbing questions he has no real answers to give beyond the ones Webber gave on his behalf. The message from Woking, though, is unambiguous: nobody at McLaren is planning to break up a partnership that has just delivered its best years in three decades.
