SPIELBERG, Austria (Reuters) -Red Bull team boss Christian Horner dismissed talk of Max Verstappen moving to Mercedes, maybe even next year, as just noise on Saturday and suggested that the four-times world champion was irritated by it.
Mercedes have George Russell out of contract at the end of the year and both the British driver and team boss Toto Wolff have referenced the possibility of Verstappen becoming available at some point.
"It's a lot of noise. I think Max gets quite annoyed by it and we are very clear with the contract that we have with Max until 2028," Horner told Sky Sports television after Austrian Grand Prix qualifying.
"Anything is entirely speculative that is being said but we tend not to pay too much attention to it.
"I can imagine that George is frustrated, he hasn't been given a contract yet. But that's between him and his team. The situation with Max, we know clearly where we're at, as does Max," he added.
"Everything is subject to noise and within any contract it remains confidential between the parties."
Verstappen is known to have a release clause in his contract which would allow him to leave if certain performance targets are not met.
The Dutch driver is third overall in the championship, 43 points behind McLaren's Oscar Piastri, but qualified only seventh on Saturday for his team's home race at the Red Bull Ring with McLaren's Lando Norris on pole.
Verstappen recognised he would not have been able to take pole position even without the yellow flags that forced him to abort his final effort.
"FP3 (final practice) wasn't too bad but somehow in qualifying it just completely disappeared, there wasn't a single corner where I felt happy with the car," said the champion.
"That is of course a big problem with qualifying.
"Hopefully tomorrow we can at least be competitive with Ferrari or Mercedes. I don't know because with the balance that I had in quali, for sure that is not going to look great for tomorrow."
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Clare Fallon)
