Rob Smedley thinks Piastri's move to Red Bull is wrong: "It won't work"

The idea of a driver escaping the shadow of a dominant team-mate by seeking number one status elsewhere is as old as Formula 1 itself. But according to two seasoned figures from the paddock, it almost never delivers what drivers hope for.

Smedley: "I've Never Seen It Work Out Well"

"If you're a driver in that team and you're struggling against your team-mate — I'm going back now to my Ferrari days — what's the option for you? Do you leave and go to a worse team that actually has no chance of winning the world championship, but you might be the better driver in that team?"

It is a damning assessment, and one grounded in real experience at the sharp end of the sport. Smedley — who recently warned Ferrari risk spiralling into a damaging 'negative loop' — knows better than most how the power structures within elite teams shape a driver's career trajectory.

Szafnauer: The Problem of Sustained Dominance

Former Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer added crucial context, identifying sustained single-team dominance as the structural barrier that makes such moves so difficult to pull off.

"Yeah, because there's two things that happen. That team you're going to, you're saying isn't the best team, you've got to be the number one driver there, which you know you could be. But then that team also has to ascend to be the best team."

"And those two things are a bit more rare. Especially the team moving from third best to first, you know? Because usually there's periods of six, seven years of Mercedes or four or five years of Red Bull or whatever it was with Ferrari and Michael [Schumacher] — about ten."

The arithmetic is brutal. "So in those ten years, if you're the number two at Ferrari and you say, 'You know what, I want to be the number one somewhere else,' you've got ten years of wherever you went is not the best team."

For a driver chasing a world championship, that is essentially a career-defining gamble made against the odds — even before accounting for the difficulty of a midfield team making that kind of competitive leap.

The Piastri Dimension

The timing of this debate is far from coincidental. As Motorsport.com understands, Red Bull is targeting Oscar Piastri as the preferred candidate to fill Max Verstappen's seat should the four-time champion depart the Milton Keynes squad. With Verstappen's enthusiasm for the current regulations reportedly wavering — having previously floated the prospect of a sabbatical or even retirement — the Dutch driver's long-term future at Red Bull is far from guaranteed, despite a contract that runs until 2028. Reported exit clauses in his deal could, however, accelerate any departure.

The prospect puts Piastri in a fascinating position. The Australian is currently contracted with McLaren through 2027, and the Woking outfit regards him as a cornerstone of its long-term plans. Yet the allure of stepping into the lead driver role at Red Bull — potentially alongside Isack Hadjar — represents a very different kind of opportunity.

For more on how this storyline is developing across the grid, our full breakdown of the 2026 F1 driver market sets the wider context.

Applying Smedley and Szafnauer's logic directly: Piastri at McLaren is undeniably competing alongside Lando Norris in what has become one of the sport's most evenly matched pairings. But McLaren, as a reigning championship-winning outfit, is not a team to walk away from lightly. The question is whether Red Bull — with or without Verstappen — represents an ascent or a lateral move. Given everything Szafnauer outlined, that question alone should give Piastri and his management considerable pause.