Red Bull team boss Horner tells how Mercedes also wanted to sign Verstappen
Anyone who has been following Verstappen’s career for some years will undoubtedly know this story – broadly speaking. When Max Verstappen was 17 years old, Red Bull was not the only team eager to sign him. ‘Niki Lauda was pushing like crazy for him at the time [Verstappen] to join Mercedes,” Christian Horner told The Sun. Lauda was also one of the reasons Hamilton went to Mercedes at the time – the Austrian was an outstanding talent scout.
The problem for Mercedes was that they didn’t have a seat available. “There was a desire from Mercedes to sign Max for Formula 3 in 2014,” Horner said. Fortunately, Red Bull did have a spot available in its sister team Toro Rosso, which is now Alpha Tauri. “I had dinner that night with Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko and the only chance we had was to offer him a seat in Toro Rosso. He asked me what I thought and I said if he’s good enough, we’ll go for it,” Horner recalls.
What if Mercedes had signed Max Verstappen?
The big question is what would have happened if Toro Rosso hadn’t had a seat for Verstappen. Would he have been driving for Mercedes in F3? Would he have been given the seat next to Hamilton instead of Bottas? Or was he sitting next to Russell now? Or had he long since become world champion three times? It sounds like a nice scenario for an episode What If…? on Disney+.
