When the joy is gone

 Max Verstappen isn't the first driver to decide he doesn't like his new car. But he is the first one who's won four Formula One driving titles and more F1 races (76) than anyone besides Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher.

He remains, if not the best wheelman in motorsports, at least one of the top two or three. On a good day, with a good car under him, everyone else might as well stay home. You're not gonna beat him.

Who can forget last year, when, even in a Red Bull ride that was not nearly as dominant as it had been, he won six of the last nine races -- including the last three -- to nearly overhaul Lando Norris for his fifth F1 title?  Finished just two points behind after trailing Norris by 104 at one point.

So, yeah. Max was still Max.

Now?

Well, now the cars are all different, thanks to an overhaul of F1 regs. And Verstappen hates the change. Says it's now "anti-driving."

Says it's just not fun anymore, and he's thinking seriously of walking away from the sport at the end of this season.

He said all this after finishing eighth in the Chinese Grand Prix -- the new wunderkind of F1, 19-year-old Kimi Antonelli, collected his second straight win of 2026 -- and, sure, the immediate reaction is, well, he's just mad because it's harder to win these days. More than whiff of gonna-take-my-ball-and-go-home in that.

Except.

Except, Max has always said he'd stick with F1 until it wasn't fun anymore. He said this when he was winning those four straight titles and damn near every race on the skeddy. And he said it even when he was no longer the champion, or before he ever was.

"I can easily accept to be in P7 or P8 where I am," he said last weekend. "Because I also know that you can't be dominating or be first or second or whatever, fighting for a podium every time. I'm very realistic in that and I've been there before. I've not only been winning in F1."

 But?

"But at the same time when you are in P7 or P8 and you are not enjoying the whole formula behind it, it doesn't feel natural to a racing driver ... Then at one point, yeah, it's just not what I want to do."

And here, of course, is where we need to point out Verstappen is still not yet 30. So of course he puts a premium on having fun doing what he's doing. Having once, eons ago, been a 20-something myself, I know this is true. You don't so much care about the money, even (and perhaps especially) when you're either not making any or, like Max, filling entire bank vaults with it. The joy is the thing.

And the joy is gone, for Max Verstappen. Just as it goes for athletes at the other end of the chronological spectrum, when age and infirmity drains what used to be an inexhaustible reservoir of passion.

No one questions the 38-year-old linebacker with a quantum of knee surgeries in his past when he steps away, saying that passion can't beat out the pain anymore. But when a Max Verstappen talks about quitting at the peak of his powers because it's no fun anymore?

Well, then he's just a sore loser. Or seems so.

Me?

I think it's just 29-year-old Max Verstappen being 29-year-old Max Verstappen. And being who he's always been.