Lewis Hamilton has quashed reports of a move to Ferrari and said he is close to agreeing on a new contract with Mercedes.
The seven-time world champion is in the final year of his current commitment, and rumours have swirled as to his future with the team.
The waters were muddied when it was reported that Ferrari had approached him about a move to the team for the 2024 season.
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Lewis Hamilton has denied receiving any approach from Ferrari, and that his representatives are close to thrashing out fresh terms with Mercedes.
“Naturally, when you are in contract negotiations there will always be speculation and ultimately unless you hear it from me then that’s what it is,” Hamilton said.
“My team is working closely behind the scenes with Toto [Wolff, Mercedes team principal] and we are almost at the end of having the contract ready.”
Asked if there had been any approach from Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton’s one-word answer was unequivocal: “No.”
Since winning his seventh title in 2020 and going agonizingly close in 2021, Hamilton and Mercedes have been well off the pace of Red Bull.
Lewis Hamilton denied that the poor performance on the track was playing a part in the protracted negotiations.
“No, it doesn’t have a bearing because we are still a championship-winning team,” he said. “It’s just we have the wrong car, there have been some decisions that have been made over the past two years that have not been ideal and we are working our way through that.
“I have got a great team in the background that is doing all the [negotiating] work so I can focus fully on the job at hand. I say what I want and that’s what we are working towards, hopefully in the coming weeks.”
Lewis Hamilton will be back in action at the Monaco Grand Prix this weekend.
The 38-year-old is fourth in the drivers’ standings, 63 points adrift of leader Max Verstappen.
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Mercedes is set to unveil their car updates in Monaco, and Lewis Hamilton is hoping to see improvements in the weeks ahead.
“It will be difficult to see just how it works at this kind of track, but I’m hopeful that it puts us a little bit closer to these guys,” Hamilton said of the changes. “I don’t think we’ll be fighting for a win necessarily, but hopefully we’ll be more in the fight.”
Lewis Hamilton and George Russell on Mercedes upgrade
Lewis Hamilton said he was looking forward to trying the upgraded car Mercedes have brought to Monaco, which is the first step in a development plan kicked off when Wolff admitted at the first race of the season that the team had made a mistake in pursuing their unique car concept.
The Mercedes design revised sidepods, floor, and front suspension, and it is in a similar vein to that pioneered by Red Bull when F1’s new rules were introduced in 2022.
Aspects of the design also bear similarities to the Aston Martin, which has been the surprise of the season in 2023.
“It will be interesting to see how it works,” Lewis Hamilton said. “I don’t think we will be fighting for a win but hopefully we will be more in the fight.
We are still a championship-winning team but we have had the wrong car and some decisions that have been made are not ideal.”
Team-mate George Russell said Mercedes would not draw any conclusions about the performance of the upgrade this weekend because of the uniqueness of the tight and twisty Monaco circuit.
Russell said: “We are aware this is a very one-of-a-kind circuit and we are not going to read anything into the performance that the new updates show this weekend.
“There are always outliers in teams who overperform around tracks like Monaco and teams that underperform. But ultimately, we don’t design a car to be at its peak in Monaco.
“I trust in the team and I don’t think there will be anything scary with the upgrade that throws us off-piste.
“We will treat it as a one-of-a-kind and then re-evaluate in Barcelona (the following weekend).
“I am glad we are proceeding with it because you always want to put as much performance on the car as possible and it would have been a demoralising weekend for all of us had we known we had a bit of performance on the table.”
