F1 LIVE: Lewis Hamilton backed to ‘reinvent himself’ after racing

Jump to contentSign up to our newslettersSubscribeNewsSportsVoicesCultureLifestyleTravelPremiumCloseMax Verstappen’s F1 RecordsLewis Hamilton has been backed to ‘reinvent himself’ in a ‘second or third career’ after racing by Mercedes boss Toto Wolff. Seven-time world champion Hamilton has endured a difficult season off the back of controversially missing out on a record eighth title in Abu Dhabi last year.The 37-year-old is yet to win a race in 2022 and is currently fifth in the Driver Standings, with Red Bull and Ferrari producing a quicker car than Mercedes after a change in regulations.While the Silver Arrows are hopeful of being back in the hunt in 2023, Mercedes CEO Wolff praised Hamilton’s ‘intelligence’ in analysing his remaining years in the sport, with Hamilton himself saying that he can see himself continuing for another five years despite his numerous interests outside of racing. 1667317194The FIA confirmed in Mexico City on Friday that Red Bull – the team which carried Verstappen to the most contentious title in the sport’s history – overspent by £1.86m. Red Bull have entered into a so-called Accepted Breach Agreement (ABA) with F1’s governing body. In addition to the fine, Red Bull have had their wind tunnel time reduced by 10 per cent over the next 12 months – a punishment Horner called ‘draconian’ and claimed will cost his team up to half-a-second in lap time.The ABA – which ensures Red Bull lose any right to appeal – avoids the team risking a harsher punishment which might have included the deduction of points and Hamilton being instated as last year’s title winner.Hamilton was denied a record eighth world crown when former race director Michael Masi fudged the safety car rules at the season finale in Abu Dhabi. Verstappen took the title by eight points. McLaren boss Zak Brown wrote to FIA president Mohammed ben Sulayem earlier this month to say a financial breach ‘constitutes cheating’.However, the FIA concluded that Red Bull ‘did not act in bad faith, dishonestly or in a fraudulent manner’ when it broke the £114m budget cap.’I don’t think it has overshadowed Max’s achievements,’ said Red Bull team principal Horner. ‘Inevitably there was so much noise about last year’s championship anyway. And when this comes up and you hear about it for the first time in Singapore and all the noise comes again.’But Max Verstappen won last year’s world championship fair and square. He did what he had to do on the day. He did his job. The team did our job. He won the race. He is the world champion. What we are talking about here had no effect whatsoever on the performance of his car last year.’ The FIA confirmed on Friday that Red Bull – the team which carried Verstappen to the most contentious title in the sport’s history – overspent by £1.86m last year Kieran Jackson1 November 2022 15:391667316294Max Verstappen and his entire Red Bull team – including Christian Horner – refused to speak to the broadcaster on Sunday, a week after pit-lane reporter Ted Kravitz said Hamilton was ‘robbed’ of an eighth world championship at last year’s much-debated season finale in Abu Dhabi.’Social media is a very toxic place and if you are constantly being like that live on TV then you are making it worse instead of trying to make it better,’ said Verstappen when asked about the reasons behind Red Bull’s boycott. Hamilton, who finished runner-up to Verstappen in Mexico City, added: ‘Social media is getting more and more toxic as the years go on and we should all come off it, ultimately.’Mental health is such a prominent thing right now. So many people are reading the comments, the stuff that people say, and it is hurtful. Fortunately I don’t read it, but the media platforms need to do more to protect people, particularly young kids and women. At the moment they are not doing that so I think this (online hate) will just continue.’Hamilton, 37, is a regular user of social media. In Mexico, he posted a picture celebrating victory over Fernando Alonso at the United States Grand Prix during their fractious season together at McLaren in 2007. He accompanied the photograph with a thumbs-up emoji. Hamilton has more than 30million followers on Instagram and almost eight million on TwitterKieran Jackson1 November 2022 15:241667314914The popular Australian was dropped by McLaren a year early, with compatriot and 2021 F2 champion Oscar Piastri replacing him next year. The 33-year-old, who has raced in Formula 1 for eleven-and-a-half seasons, will miss the 2023 season having been unable to land a seat elsewhere.Ricciardo, an eight-time Grand Prix winner, has been heavily linked with a reserve driver role at Mercedes but admitted after Sunday’s Mexican Grand Prix that he is still in the dark regarding his future. However 2009 world champion Button is concerned that Ricciardo’s approach – with the target of returning to a top seat in 2024 – may backfire.’Most of this season Daniel hasn’t been on the pace of Lando [Norris] and quite a bit off at times, so it’s the right move for the team,’ Button said, on Sky Sports’ Any Driven Monday show. ‘For Daniel, it’s a tricky situation. I guess he didn’t want to drop too far down the grid and work with a team that’s more towards the rear because it’s difficult for a driver coming from a team that is almost winning races at times to suddenly know you’re fighting for points.’ The popular Australian is set to take a one-year sabbatical in the hope of landing a seat in F1 in 2024 Kieran Jackson1 November 2022 15:011667313774Leclerc is now five points behind Red Bull’s Sergio Perez with two races to go – Brazil and Abu Dhabi – and has not won a race since the Austrian Grand Prix in early July. Beyond that though, Leclerc was concerned how far off the pace Ferrari were on Sunday, given they finished over a minute behind race winner Max Verstappen.’The thing that hurts is that I feel we’ve maximised everything (on race day) and even though we’ve done that, we are one minute away from Max, a huge difference,’ Leclerc said.’We need to look into that and make our bad days better, mostly because whenever we have a bad day on the Sunday it seems to be a really bad day.’Sainz, who has dropped below Lewis Hamilton to sixth in the Driver Standings, endured a similarly dull race in fifth place but – after two DNFs in a row – was simply pleased to see the chequered flag.Leclerc finished sixth in Mexico City and is without a race victory since the Austrian GP in July Kieran Jackson1 November 2022 14:421667312454In cruising to a 14th victory of the season in Mexico City on Sunday, Verstappen overtook the German duo to make history – and can stretch that haul of wins to 16 with victory at the remaining races in Brazil and Abu Dhabi.It is another milestone in a historic year for the 25-year-old, who has strolled to the World Championship a year after claiming his maiden crown in controversial fashion in a thrilling title battle with Lewis Hamilton at Yas Marina.’It’s just an incredible season for us as a team,’ said Verstappen after the win in Mexico. ‘I never thought I would be able to win 14 races in a year. But yeah, of course, I’m incredibly proud.’I just live in the moment. I just try to, of course, do the best I can every single weekend. I try to win the races and that, for me, is the most important. Every single weekend when I go home, and I can say to myself that I maximised or close to that I’m happy.’ Max Verstappen ‘incredibly proud’ of F1 season race wins recordKieran Jackson1 November 2022 14:201667311194Lewis Hamilton has been backed to ‘reinvent himself’ in a ‘second or third career’ after racing by Mercedes boss Toto Wolff. Seven-time world champion Hamilton has endured a difficult season off the back of controversially missing out on a record eighth title in Abu Dhabi last year.The 37-year-old is yet to win a race in 2022 and is currently fifth in the Driver Standings, with Red Bull and Ferrari producing a quicker car than Mercedes after a change in regulations.While the Silver Arrows are hopeful of being back in the hunt in 2023, Mercedes CEO Wolff praised Hamilton’s ‘intelligence’ in analysing his remaining years in the sport, with Hamilton himself saying that he can see himself continuing for another five years.’Lewis is totally mature and conscious about where he stands in his career,’ Wolff told the Performance People podcast. ‘He’s not being led by his emotions, like I’ve seen with sportspeople that think it can go on forever and trying to hang on to it.’Lewis is rational and intelligent about it. He says ‘I know I have a shelf life as a racing driver’. Lewis knows that one day he will not be the best himself anymore. That hasn’t happened yet. But we’ve been talking about it. He said ‘I’d love to continue…do you think we can do another five to 10 years?’ But this is more jokingly.’ Lewis Hamilton backed to ‘reinvent himself’ in ‘second or third career’ by Toto WolffKieran Jackson1 November 2022 13:591667310054Max Verstappen put Red Bull’s off-track dramas to one side to win the Mexican Grand Prix and claim the record of most victories in a Formula One season.Forty-eight hours after Red Bull were fined £6million for breaking the sport’s financial rules – before the team went on to boycott Sky Sports’ coverage – Verstappen claimed his 14th win of the year.Michael Schumacher won 13 of the 18 races staged in 2004. Sebastian Vettel recorded the same number of wins from 19 rounds in 2013. But Verstappen now stands alone as the driver with the most wins in a single campaign.Lewis Hamilton hoped a different tyre strategy to Verstappen would propel him to his first win of the year. But he crossed the line 15.1 seconds behind Verstappen, with Sergio Perez third. George Russell finished fourth for Mercedes. Max Verstappen cruises to comfortable win at Mexican Grand Prix with Lewis Hamilton second Kieran Jackson1 November 2022 13:401667308794Today, the FIA proved to the world once again that they do not have what it takes to adjudicate over their own sport.Red Bull Racing, found to be guilty by an FIA investigation of a ‘minor breach’ of the budget cap last season, have been punished under the terms of an ‘Accepted Breach Agreement’ (ABA) with a $7m fine and a minor development penalty on next season’s car.Red Bull fans have been quick to point out what they believe to be the key word – ‘minor’, meaning that the team overspent by 5 per cent or under of the total budget cap. Whilst this is easily written off for some, others (including myself) are not so easily distracted from the fact that this is blatant cheating.A reminder: the budget cap for the 2021 season was a massive $145m, with this ‘minor’ breach seeing Red Bull having used an extra $2.2m denied to other teams. It begs the obvious question – why have a cost cap if you can break it and face such minor penalties?Now, within the wider context of the cash-soaked sport, it is a fairly menial sum of money by which Red Bull have overspent, but F1 is defined by the tightest of tight margins and milliseconds. Few will need reminding that Max Verstappen won the 2021 championship on the final lap of the final race by a little over two seconds. I can scarcely believe I’m having to spell it out, but in my book (and evidently and rather dumbfoundingly, not in the FIA’s), cheating is cheating.Who knows how many hundredths of a second those extra millions shaved off that car’s times last season? Any competitive advantage gained by any extra spending should be scrutinised by the penny and punished under one clear and coherent set of guidelines. Why have a cost cap at all, if you can break it and face such minor penalties? If every team knew they could get off this lightly, you’d bet the house that they would all take that chanceKieran Jackson1 November 2022 13:191667307594Schumacher won 13 races out of 18 in the 2004 season and Vettel 13 of 19 in 2013, with Verstappen matching the latter by winning the United States Grand Prix a week ago before moving out on his own on Sunday.With Sao Paulo and Abu Dhabi still to come, he can still get up to 16 wins this season.It is notable that he has achieved it with far fewer pole positions than either Vettel or Schumacher, who had nine and eight respectively while Verstappen’s in Mexico was only his sixth of the campaign.As it stands, Verstappen has won 70 per cent of races this season, a mark that would rank equal-third all time with Jim Clark. Should he win both remaining races to make it 16 out of 22, that 72.7 per cent figure would lift him to second.Alberto Ascari won six out of eight in 1952 for a record 75 per cent win rate, while Schumacher’s 13 out of 18 equates to 72.2. Clark had the only other 70 per cent season with seven wins out of 10 in 1963. The Dutchman’s victory in Mexico on Sunday was a 14th race win of the yearKieran Jackson1 November 2022 12:591667306454Lewis Hamilton is set to extend his Formula One career beyond his 40th birthday after he revealed he will thrash out a new deal with Mercedes in the coming months.Hamilton’s £40million-a-year contract with the team expires at the end of next season. But the seven-time world champion, who turns 38 in January, wants to continue his record-breaking journey in the sport, with a multiple-year extension set to carry him into his forties.Speaking ahead of Sunday’s Mexican Grand Prix, Hamilton said: ‘We are going to do another deal. We are going to sit down and discuss it in these next couple of months.’Hamilton joined Mercedes in 2013 after bursting on to the Formula One scene with McLaren in 2007. The Stevenage-born driver, who has the most victories and pole positions in F1 history – and shares the record of seven world championships with Michael Schumacher – has been supported by the Silver Arrows since his childhood.Hamilton has endured a turbulent campaign in his uncompetitive Mercedes machinery this season, while there were question marks over whether he would even return to F1 following his contentious championship defeat against Max Verstappen in Abu Dhabi last year.However, Hamilton continued: ‘I want to keep racing. I love what I do. I’ve been doing it for 30 years, and I don’t feel that I should have to stop. I think I am currently still earning my keep. I still want to do better.’I could stop now and I have lots of other things in the pipeline that I will be super-focused and super-busy with. I’m here for the sheer love of working in the organisation that I’m in. So you are stuck with me for quite a bit longer. My goal is to continue to be with Mercedes. I’ve been with Mercedes since I was 13. It really is my family.’ The seven-time world champion’s £40m-a-year deal with the team expires at the end of next season Kieran Jackson1 November 2022 12:40Registration is a free and easy way to support our truly independent journalismBy registering, you will also enjoy limited access to Premium articles, exclusive newsletters, commenting, and virtual events with our leading journalistsAlready have an account? sign inRegistration is a free and easy way to support our truly independent journalismBy registering, you will also enjoy limited access to Premium articles, exclusive newsletters, commenting, and virtual events with our leading journalistsAlready have an account? sign inMax VerstappenMichael SchumacherSky SportsSebastian VettelPlease refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in