He may arguably be the best driver on the grid and easily the most consistent driver of the current modern era but Lewis Hamilton’s new Mercedes deal is giving the six-time world champion a bit of a hard time.
While there hasn’t been a great deal of talk lately regarding Lewis Hamilton’s new Mercedes deal, in the immediate aftermath of the Briton sealing the fate on the 2019 championship, it appears that this is the next big step in his F1 journey.
In fact, truth be told, the importance around Lewis Hamilton’s new Mercedes deal is such that the “Golden man behind the rise of the Silver Arrows” confessed that he is not looking forward to another stressful moment pertaining to the contract talks with Mercedes next year.
Where it stands currently, it’s worthwhile to note that the world champion runs out of a contract at the end of the 2020 season. And this is precisely where there seems to be a lot of excitement.
While there’s a school of thought that tends to think that Hamilton may join Ferrari in the latter stages of his career, there’s another more Mercedes-pro faction that thinks that under no circumstances will the Stevenage-born driver consider to go ‘red’, i.e., move to the Maranello-based outfit in Formula 1.
Fundamentally, 2020 has its own set of importance for Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes for the simple reason that this might be the year where the superstar driver, currently a winner of 83 Grands Prix would go onto bag a seventh driver’s title and therefore, draw level with the great Michael Schumacher. Although that said, the possibility of Hamilton matching Schumacher’s tally of wins- 91- seems likely by the completion of the next F1 season.
In that aspect, Lewis Hamilton’s new Mercedes deal that decides his Grand Prix future in the post-2020 period becomes all the more important.
Interestingly, some are also of the view and have floated the rumor that Hamilton might discover a life outside of F1 but then one can put it down to being no more than poorly-conceived rumors.
Nonetheless, Hamilton has indicated his own eagerness to stay in the sport with father Anthony even reckoning that he may end up driving until 40.
But here are the thoughts of the man himself on the subject of a new Mercedes deal:
I only just did this contract and already I have to start talking about potentially the next one, which is frustrating because it is another stressful moment where you have to get into the room, get into the ring, and have a friendly yet intense conversation about terms and all of this kind of thing,” he said ahead of the Brazilian Grand Prix.”
He would further add, “but I am used to it and I like to think that I am a relatively good negotiator.”
In addition to the above, Lewis reckons that things might get a bit tough during the stage of the negotiation and added, “you are both trying to see what more you can get out of it: how you can do things better, things that you have to change and it takes years to change some of the formalities that we go through within this team.
“But the team has been amazing: Bradley [Lord, communications chief] and his team working around to help lighten the load but make it more impactful. The way I work with the engineers, lots of different things.”