Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies is convinced he can keep four-time champion Max Verstappen at his team next year, despite mounting speculation the Dutchman could leave for a rival.
Verstappen has a contract until the end of 2028, but sources have told ESPN that a performance-related clause exists that will likely allow him to make an early exit at the end of the year if he wants.
Unconfirmed reports have linked Verstappen's future to McLaren and Mercedes in recent weeks, with both teams making stronger starts under F1's new regulations than Red Bull.
What's more, a number of key figures have either left Red Bull in recent years or are set to leave in coming seasons, including Verstappen's race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase who will join McLaren in 2028.
But Mekies is confident car performance will be the main factor driving any decision on Verstappen's future, and is hopeful an upgrade at this weekend's Austrian Grand Prix will help cement the Dutch driver at the team for 2027.
"Max has made it clear to us that he wants to continue with the team," Mekies said. "It's equally clear that he needs a fast car for him to be happy with the team.
"As I said a few weeks ago, we are not asking Max every week [about his future]. He's pushing with us, he's helping us to find the right development path for the car.
"Again this morning [during a practice session], doing very large tests, scans through the sessions to try to turn all the stones possible.
"[Verstappen's future] is not a topic for us, the topic for us is to get the car back to where we want it to be. And as you may agree, if the car is back where we want to be there will be no discussion."
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Mekies said an upgrade at the Miami Grand Prix saw Red Bull close the gap to the front of the grid from one second to half a second.
He now hopes the changes to the car in Austria will see the gap halved again to 0.2 or 0.3 seconds.
"I'm convinced that Max wants to see continuous progress," he added. "And again, he knows very well that you don't go from a one second [gap] to zero in no time. But he wants to see that path, I'm sure, to continue to improve.
"And I think it's only about, to your questions, overall lap time. So if we can close that gap to only a couple of tenths, it would mean that we still keep having the gap to the competition [come down] and we'll be in this fighting ground soon."