Max Verstappen has signed the first outside driver to his management stable, and the choice says as much about the four-time champion's off-track ambitions as it does about the teenager he has taken on. Dries van Langendonck, a 15-year-old Belgian who leads the British Formula 4 championship, joins Verstappen Racing while remaining part of McLaren's junior programme — an unusual arrangement that had the paddock talking at Spa long before a wheel turned in anger.
Van Langendonck is not a token signing. He has won seven karting titles, took pole and victory on his Formula 4 debut weekend, and won the Formula Winter Series with nine wins from 15 starts. He has led the British F4 standings with four wins from his first 15 races and has been on McLaren's books since July 2024. Verstappen, who rarely lends his name to junior drivers, framed the decision as a matter of raw talent.
"I would only do it with drivers in whom I genuinely see great potential," Verstappen said. "Dries has been a big talent for a long time already in go-karting and I think you can spot quite quickly when someone is a little bit more special than someone else."
The comparison he reached for was himself. "He's very good for a 15-year-old," Verstappen said. "Compared to myself when I was 15, he's very, very good." Speaking to GPblog, he went further: "Drivers like this don't come around every year. For me, Dries is actually the first of whom I think there's real potential there."
The deal splits in two. Raymond Vermeulen, Verstappen's long-time manager, handles the career decisions and the budget — no small matter given, as Verstappen noted, some of the budgets in Formula 3 and Formula 2 are quite high. Verstappen himself takes the coaching role, with Van Langendonck getting time on the Verstappen Racing simulators in Tilburg. The point, Verstappen said, is to avoid the traps that sink young careers: "You often see wrong choices being made in the junior categories, where a driver ends up with the wrong team."
What made the story travel is the badge Van Langendonck keeps. He stays a McLaren junior, both camps contribute to his budget, and the Woking connection gave the timing its extra charge. Jos Verstappen and Vermeulen were spotted in McLaren's hospitality at Spa on Friday, between the two practice sessions — a sight that, with Verstappen-to-McLaren rumours still simmering, was always going to be read two ways. People close to the deal insist the meeting was about the 15-year-old and nothing more.
That is roughly where the analysts land too. The Race argued the signing "in no way reflects anything about Verstappen's future aside from the apparent growing independence of his overall racing ambitions from Red Bull." It is the first time Verstappen Racing — until now a home for simracers, GT3 drivers and his father's rally projects — has backed a driver whose sole target is Formula 1. Autosport read it the same way: Verstappen building something of his own, on his own terms.
His pitch for the driver is plain enough. "The goal, like I said before, is Formula 1," Verstappen said, "so we're just going to try and help him achieve that by making hopefully the right calls and decisions in terms of where he has to race." There is history underneath it, too. "Dries' father knew my father, and they were also good friends through the Pex family," Verstappen said — karting ties that, years on, have turned into a contract.
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*Originally published on [NewsFormula.one](https://newsformula.one/article/verstappen-signs-mclaren-junior-van-langendonck-what-it-signals). Visit for full coverage.*