Max Verstappen was the driving force behind an urgent technical meeting at Red Bull's Milton Keynes headquarters, held in the days before he clinched his first win of the season from pole at Suzuka.
With the 2025 car plagued by evident pace and handling issues—and amid swirling rumours of the four-time world champion potentially leaving the team—Verstappen's standout performance has drawn exceptional acclaim. "I did not bet on this one," Red Bull advisor Dr Helmut Marko confessed to De Telegraaf at Suzuka.
"I was too scared. Max drove 53 qualifying laps on the limit. Nobody else can do that. It was unbelievable."
Even Fernando Alonso, rarely one to laud competitors, described Verstappen's qualifying lap as "magical".
When asked late on Sunday if the achievement felt as extraordinary to him as it did to the paddock, the 27-year-old Dutchman replied: "Yes, it does."
On the wave of praise, he added: "I mean it's nice, but I'm a bit of a person who doesn't listen to the positives and the negatives. I'm just in the middle, you know."
Speaking to Viaplay after the Japanese Grand Prix, where he narrowed Lando Norris's championship lead to one point, Verstappen said: "I'm very happy with what I'm doing. I don't even want to think about if I had been那 in that other car," referring to McLaren's pace-setting machine.
"Then you wouldn't have seen me anymore." The interviewer quipped that Verstappen would be in Tokyo by the time second place crossed the line. "Maybe, yes," Verstappen laughed. "But it doesn't matter, because it's not going to happen."
Despite the victory, speculation ties Verstappen to Mercedes or Aston Martin for the future, as he stressed that the RB21's underlying issues remain unresolved.
Marko revealed that engineers adjusted "every bolt" on the car over the weekend, following recent critical talks at Milton Keynes that Verstappen attended in person.
The Dutchman insisted on the on-site meeting, banning remote participation. "Do you know what the problem is in the world at the moment?" he told Viaplay. "So many people want to work from home and not from the factory anymore. I think that's a big problem. It makes you lazy, distracted, and then you're not fully focused on what you have to do. The same applies to the moments when we have meetings. Sometimes it's nice to just look people in the eye. Old-school communication."
A key outcome of the meeting was the reassignment of Hugh Bird, formerly Sergio Perez's race engineer who had been assigned to new tasks.
He is now back at the track, on Verstappen's side of the garage - and on the Suzuka podium. "I work very well together with GP," Verstappen said of Gianpiero Lambiase, "and I also had another performance engineer this weekend with Hugh Bird. I worked with Hugh in the past, until 2020. That went very well. In the end, we made the right choices before we went into qualifying."
