Max Verstappen at Mercedes for 2026? Toto Wolff addresses the prospect of the driver joining the team

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff feels that the question of Max Verstappen racing for his team in 2026 is just too far into the future that it's not up for discussion right now. Ever since the summer break, Wolff opened up a can of worms when he shared that he had a meeting with the Red Bull driver.

Max Verstappen neither confirmed nor denied the meeting when questioned about it afterwards by the media. The driver even opted not to tell Toto Wolff to stop the somewhat public pursuit of his as he said that he could not tell anyone about what they could and could not say.

Since then, the rumor mill has been sent into overdrive with speculation around the future of Max Verstappen for 2026 since Kimi Antonelli is about to be announced for 2025. The question was put forward to Toto Wolff on whether he would entertain a Kimi Antonelli-Max Verstappen partnership in 2026, to which the Austrian said that it was too early to even talk about this.

He is happy with his current lineup and wants to have it for the long-term. At the same time, Toto did admit that he has an open channel of communication with Max, and he can talk to him whenever he wants to. He told the BBC:

"Much too early. For the benefit of our drivers next year, I don't want to have any conversation about 2026 or beyond, because we very much hope that the 2025 line-up will be the line-up going forward."

He added:

"We have not given each other any, let's say, timings. It is more like, keep the communication channel open, while knowing that his priority is to make it function with Red Bull and our priority will be to make it function with the two drivers we have."

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Mercedes boss opens up on how the conversation first began with Max Verstappen

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff talked about how the Max Verstappen conversations first began, and he pointed to the start of the season when Red Bull was going through a turbulent time. The team's principal, Christian Horner, had an internal investigation against him, and that led to a level of instability within the team.

Since the start of the season, when Red Bull was dominant and Max Verstappen was winning a lot of the races, things have changed. The team has been caught in terms of performance and has not won a race since its win in Barcelona. Toto Wolff revealed it was around this time that the conversations increased between the two parties. He said:

"Red Bull was the dominant car at the beginning of the season. And that changed a bit. It's Max Verstappen dominant at the moment. And the relationships were dysfunctional. I'm not sure they are back in a great place, but it is what it is. There was a moment, or there was an opportunity, to at least have conversations of what it could be in the future, and this is what we did."

The manner in which Wolff has talked about being in contact with Max, it would be interesting to see what kind of reaction Red Bull boss Christian Horner has when it comes to all of this.