If Verstappen leaves Red Bull: 56% of the Red Bull audience says it would leave with him

The audience data behind the Verstappen transfer question: 82% of the Red Bull audience names him as its favourite driver, 56% says it would follow him to McLaren and 55.6% of the whole grid.

BoxBoxd

4 min read 16 August 2026

Every silly season asks the same question and nobody prices it. The audience already answered: 82% of Red Bull supporters name Max Verstappen as their favourite driver and 56% of them say they would leave with him if he went to McLaren. No asset on the grid concentrates this much value in one seat.

How much of Red Bull is Verstappen?

Inside the Red Bull audience, 82% names Verstappen as its favourite driver, an over index of 3.3 against the grid. The next name is Oscar Piastri at 5.1%, a rival.

Put differently, 18.4% of the entire measured audience of the sport is a Red Bull supporter who names Verstappen, one intersection holding a fifth of the market.

No other team concentrates like this. The reading is the commercial exposure of the team in one line: the partner portfolio of Red Bull Racing is attached to an audience that mostly belongs to one man.

Max Verstappen

82%

Oscar Piastri

5.1%

Yuki Tsunoda

3.1%

Charles Leclerc

1.7%

Carlos Sainz

0.9%

Lewis Hamilton

0.7%

What happens to that audience if he leaves?

Asked directly, 56% of the Red Bull audience says it would leave with him if he left for McLaren. On the observed follow rate that is 12.5% of the total audience of the sport walking out of one portfolio and into another on a single announcement. The remaining share stays with the badge.

His own audience confirms the portability from the other side: 71.5% of the people who name Verstappen supports Red Bull Racing, yet 28.5% already supports someone else, Ferrari first at 12.7%.

He is captive and portable at the same time, which is exactly what makes the transfer question a pricing question.

Red Bull Racing

71.5%

Ferrari

12.7%

Mercedes

6.2%

Williams

4.1%

McLaren

1.9%

The Verstappen tax every rival pays

Asked which driver carries the strongest sponsor portfolio, 55.6% of the whole audience names Verstappen and the figure holds inside rival camps: 55.4% of Ferrari supporters, 53.3% of Williams supporters, 48% of Mercedes supporters and 43.5% of McLaren supporters name him ahead of their own driver.

For his camp that perception is a premium the reach numbers never show. For every rival brand it is a tax, because their own audience partly measures commercial weight by a man in someone else’s car.

The opportunity is underneath: a driver the audience has not yet filed as commercial costs less even when his real audience is comparable.

Ferrari supporters

55.4%

Williams supporters

53.3%

Mercedes supporters

48%

McLaren supporters

43.5%

What a team should do with this number

For Red Bull the reading argues for measuring the split between the audience of the badge and the audience of the man every season, because the difference between 56% leaving and 56% staying is the difference between an exposure and a catastrophe. Only measurement says which one the portfolio is holding.

For a team courting him the same number is the business case: a Verstappen arrival carries a measured share of the biggest audience concentration in the sport, plus the strongest commercial perception on the grid. That is what the seat buys before the car turns a wheel.

Source: BoxBoxd, the motorsport social network. The Brand Recall Index is measured on the BoxBoxd audience through the 2026 season, where a blurred sponsor logo is shown with no name attached and three questions follow: name the brand, name the team, place the branding on the car.