Honestly I dont see the benefit of having Hulkenberg in that car. 2025 will still be a transition year and he'll be pushing 39 by 2026 (bday in august).

Is this just a lack of a proper German talent?

Wonder where Bottas will go? Zhou is so important now that the Chinese GP is back, that his seat is certainly secured. Maybe Valtteri will replace Hülkenberg. Or what about Williams? He started his F1 career there, and Sargeant is so slow and causing so much damage that anyone would be an improvement.
Obviously, Bottas may also retire. That would mean 2025 is the first season without Finnish drivers since 1988.

They want experience, Toyota did the same with hiring older drivers to develop the car. A bottas hulk or sainz hulk line up probably, Zhou lacks the experience. And in a few years they'll replace hulkenberg with a younger talent

and more important Bottas has wins and podiums on his CV, but also Toto Wolff management behind him so who knows

Germans are saying a meeting between Verstappen and Mercedes has been set up to take place after Miami GP already.

https://f1-insider.com/formel-1-verstap ... gen-63046/

That's right Max, walk away from a 100% certain world championship in 2025 to head to a team that can't work out why their car doesn't work and don't have the data to fix it...

Makes sense...

I wonder if you reach a point where winning every race easily becomes boring. It must be more satisfying to win races when you've had wheel to wheel battles and really given 100%. I can understand the appeal of a new challenge. From a fan point of view it would be great to see what Max could achieve in the second or third best car. It would also shut up the "he only wins because he has the best car" social media brigade.

The Team announces that Chief Technical Officer Adrian Newey will leave the Red Bull Technology Group in the first quarter of 2025.
The engineering supremo will step back from Formula 1 design duties to focus on final development and delivery of Red Bull’s first hypercar, the hugely anticipated RB17.
He will remain involved in and committed to this exciting project until its completion.
We’d like to thank Adrian for our achievements in the time that we have worked together so far. He has been instrumental for us in achieving a remarkable seven Formula One Drivers’ and six Constructors’ Championship titles - totalling 118 victories and 101 poles including the STR 2007 pole and victory.

I think that means he's leaving the F1 team immediately and moving to the hypercar project, and then he will leave that next spring.

There are (unverified) reports that there is a 12-month no-compete on top of that, which (if true) would mean he cannot work for anyone else in F1 until Q1 2026.