Lewis Hamilton has claimed he will not retire from F1 anytime soon despite struggling to compete for wins and podiums this season. The Mercedes star answered rumors surrounding his future after the Silver Arrows have struggled to match the pace of Ferrari and Red Bull.
The seven-time champion still enjoys competing just as much as he did when he joined the sport back in 2007. Speaking to Italian publication Corriere Della Sera, he said: “Hard question! Let’s take this season.
“I probably won’t win the title, but I feel the same pleasure of competing as when I started. Why should I stop? Maybe one day I won’t be able to take the pressure anymore, I’ll be tired, but that day hasn’t come yet.”
Hamilton has already addressed the retirement rumors head-on this season. After the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, Hamilton posted on Instagram claiming only he would be the one to decide when his ‘masterpiece’ was finished.
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Hamilton also added: “I’ve been with Mercedes since I was 13. We’ve had amazing times together. We’ve ridden the highs and lows together. I am 100 percent committed to this team. There’s nowhere else that I want to be. Just because we’ve hit a rough patch, it’s just not in my DNA to back out.”
Hamilton fell over 60 points behind championship leader Max Verstappen as Mercedes continued their difficult start to the new season. The team did appear to have found some pace at last week’s Spanish Grand Prix as Hamilton recovered from an early accident to finish fifth.
However, the team appeared to have taken another backwards step in Monaco with the seven-time champion complaining of intense porpoising. The Briton’s motivation to compete lower down the field has been one of the biggest talking points of the season.
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Sky Sports pundit Martin Brundle began worrying about Hamilton’s future after the first race in Bahrain. He said: “As long as he’s still enjoying the bits around F1 or he can tolerate those bits around F1 and balance it out with just loving driving the car, [he’ll stay].
“If he goes through the whole year and Mercedes are third fastest and others are catching them up, then I suspect he’ll take a different view and my enjoyment analogy will play out in that he won’t be enjoying it anymore.”
Ted Kravitz also weighed in on the situation, claiming Hamilton had become ‘tired’ of F1.
He said: “Where does Lewis go from here? Well, clearly he’s announced. Is he now thinking about the future? Clearly he likes things that are going right, he likes fighting, he likes being on the podium. He’s clearly still looking for the eighth world championship. Has he tired I think of the grind of Formula 1? Definitely by now. Does he need Formula 1 now? That’s an open question. Does he want justice for Abu Dhabi? Yes, clearly he does.”
