In the round-up: Max Verstappen welcomed Red Bull’s decision to give his current team mate a new, two-year contract. Verstappen, has won the world championship every year since Sergio Perez joined Red Bull in 2021. He said it is “great news that Checo has signed with the team until 2026.
” “I am glad to be able to continue with the successful partnership that we have created over the past few years,” said Verstappen. “We achieved a record-breaking season last year and the team is very strong, so we are looking forward to building on this success into the next two years as well.” Advert | Become a Supporter & go ad-free However Maffei did indicate what he believes will be the cost to Andretti of entering F1 by buying an existing team instead of creating a new one, which Formula One Management opposes.
“You can’t buy a team for less than probably $1 billion,” said Maffei. He said the changes Liberty Media made to the series it took over in 2017 included “making the teams franchises so that people would really want to invest and there was an opportunity there to make money as a team.” FIA president Mohamed Ben Sulayem recently changed his stance on Andretti’s application to enter F1, saying they should buy a team, a position echoed by the existing competitors as well as FOM.
Aston Martin junior driver Jak Crawford tested one of the team’s cars at the Red Bull Ring in Austria yesterday, one day after Ryo Hirakawa’s outing at the same track for McLaren.
