Hamilton rejects ‘silly, nonsense’ suggestions he will quit Mercedes

The seven-time world champion has a contract with Mercedes which runs until the end of 2023 but ex-F1 driver Mika Hakkinen recently predicted that Hamilton could quit the Silver Arrows after the team’s miserable start to the season. 

Two-time world champion Hakkinen said he can imagine Hamilton “sulking” and “whining” at the situation he finds himself in and believes the Briton will “start thinking of switching teams”.  

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While Hamilton did not directly name Hakkinen, he firmly rejected the idea of leaving Mercedes and insisted he is “100% committed” to the team with which he has won six of his seven world titles. 

“I’ve seen a couple of comments from certain individuals that I remember growing up respecting when I was younger, but ultimately their comments are silly and a bunch of nonsense all in the aim to get headlines to keep themselves relevant,” Hamilton said. 

“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% 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. We are still world champions and we can fix this. It’s just going to take longer, it’s going to take a painful year. 

“I think, ultimately, this is going to be a painful year that we’re going to have to ride out together with belief that we can rectify it at some point, maybe through the year or even the worst case scenario, at least for next year.” 

W13 “not far off” McLaren’s disastrous 2009 car 

Hamilton, who has already written off his chances of fighting for the F1 title this season after falling 50 points behind early championship leader Charles Leclerc, compared Mercedes’ troubled W13 challenger to McLaren’s 2009 car. 

Hamilton was eventually able to claim two victories in 2009 but regards the MP4-24 as the worst F1 car he has ever driven. 

McLaren’s season got off to a woefully uncompetitive start but the team was able to vast improvements as the year progressed and Hamilton is remaining hopeful that Mercedes can pull off something similar this campaign. 

“There are people that watch and say that I've never had a bad car and I can assure you I have,” Hamilton said. “The 2009 car was very, very far off, and was the worst car that I've had. 

“This car currently is not far off that experience, but I think has a lot of potential. As did that car, we fixed it eventually and got back in the fight, or in the game. And I have the utmost faith that my team can do that here too.”

Drawing a companion between the two seasons, Hamilton added: “The scenario in 2009 was I was in my third year in this sport, it was a brand new era of car. And I remember coming back in February, or January, to the team, and I remember the head aerodynamicists and team guys at the top were like, 'Oh, we've already hit our target.’ 

"The new rules said that we would have 50% less downforce in 2009, so they designed the car to have 50%, less downforce! And I remember in February, we were like, 'Oh, we've already hit our target.' And I was like, 'That doesn't sound right” but I didn't have the experience at the time. 

“And then obviously we got to the first test and we realised that others had almost as much downforce as the previous year. And they were like, 'Oh shoot, we've got to work to regain that.' And the ultimate unlocker of that was a double diffuser. And we got there. 

"This one's different because the team have not been like, 'Oh, we've already hit our goal.' We didn't know where everyone would be. They've been super innovative with design. And our wind tunnel was telling we had really good downforce. And unfortunately, we got on track and we didn't see that... There was no bouncing, for example, in a wind tunnel. And we came across this phenomenon. 

"This experience is a lot harder to fix than then we could have ever imagined. But as I've said, it doesn't kill us will only make us stronger. And we will find a solution one way or another.”