  Apart from the charmful decay channels of $Y(4260)$, the charmless decay
channels of $Y(4260)$ also provide us a good platform to study the nature and
the decay mechanism of $Y(4260)$. In this paper, we propose to probe the
structure of $Y(4260)$ through the charmless decays $Y(4260)\to VP$ via
intermediate $D_1\bar D+c.c.$ meson loops, where $V$ and $P$ stand for light
vector and pseudoscalar mesons, respectively. Under the molecule ansatz of
$Y(4260)$, the predicted total branching ratio $BR_{VP}$ for all $Y(4260)\to
VP$ processes are about $(0.34^{+0.32}_{-0.23})%$ to $(0.75^{+0.72}_{-0.52})%$
with the cutoff parameter $\alpha=2\sim 3$. Numerical results show that the
intermediate $D_1 \bar D+c.c.$ meson loops may be a possible transition
mechanism in the $Y(4260)\to VP$ decays. These predicted branching ratios are
the same order to that of $Y(4260) \to Z_c^+(3900) \pi^-$, which may be an
evidence of $D_1D$ molecule and can be examined by the forthcoming BESIII data
in the near future.
