Max Verstappen’s demeanour and racing style has changed amid the declining performance and internal management issues at Red Bull.
That’s the assessment of 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve, who has noted that the triple title winner seems "very depressed".
"I miss the usual aggressiveness, the will to fight that we know from him," the French Canadian is quoted as saying. "Even on the radio you can hardly hear him anymore. Something has changed."
Villeneuve thinks it’s also "very unusual" that Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez has also suddenly closed the big performance gap between them and was consistently faster at Baku.
Fellow former world champion, and Villeneuve’s ex-teammate at Williams, Damon Hill, agrees. "I don’t always agree with Jacques," he told Sky, "but often I can’t help it.
"It’s almost like Max is accepting it. I expected him to react much more indignantly, because he’s not competitive. Normally he says he won’t accept it if something isn’t right.
"What does this mean if it’s true?" Hill wonders.
Over the Azerbaijan GP weekend, rumours emerged that Verstappen’s father Jos and Toto Wolff may have shaken hands on a 2026 move to Mercedes for Max - amid new swirling rumours that Aston Martin could be another option.
The press even noticed a mood shift for Verstappen, 26, last weekend, with La Gazzetta dello Sport declaring that the Dutchman is becoming "anonymous" in grands prix. La Repubblica thinks he has "never been so bad".
"Max in crisis (and sad)," another analysis at La Gazzetta added.
Former F1 driver and fellow Dutchman Christijan Albers told De Telegraaf newspaper that he isn’t sure Verstappen is handling the performance crisis well.
"I don’t think the approach after qualifying and the races is good," he said. "I understand that everyone wants to see honesty, and Max is of course a lot younger, but what I always saw with Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton is that they embraced the team more."
Meanwhile, as Red Bull struggles to catch up with F1’s new frontrunners, it emerges that the team has abandoned plans to run custom liveries in Singapore and Austin due to concerns about the weight of the different paint.
"Nobody (at Red Bull) can point out exactly where the problem lies," Dutch racing personality Tom Coronel told Viaplay. "Max points it out a bit, but it’s certainly not a problem that can be solved in one go.
"After Singapore, they have three weeks to analyse everything a bit better or develop new parts so that the problem becomes less severe, but it won’t disappear all of a sudden," he predicts.
"There’s no way they’ll suddenly be there again."