After Sebastian Vettel’s surprising retirement on 28th July ahead of the Hungarian GP, people raised eyebrows about the future of Lewis Hamilton who recently completed his 300 races.
Following a series of years in an uncompetitive car and unable to yield any impressive results, Four-time World Champion Sebastian Vettel announced his retirement through a video on Instagram.
The announcement took everyone by surprise and people wondered about the future of Lewis Hamilton in the sport.
Lewis Hamilton is experiencing one of the most difficult seasons with the Silver Arrows. The 7-time world Champion is experiencing the longest-ever winless drought of his career.
However, Hamilton refused on any plans to retire after the surprised retirement of his long competitor and friend Sebastian Vettel.
Lewis replied when asked if Vettel’s retirement will change his future plans to stay in the sport:
“It doesn’t,”
“It’s a reminder that I am in that part of my career that the people I came up with and race with for so long are starting to stop.”
“Before you know it, Fernando [Alonso] will not be there and then who is after that? I will be the oldest I guess,”
Fernando Alonso turned 41 on 29th July. He is also a long-time competitor of Lewis Hamilton and a Veteran of the sport.
However, future of Alonso in F1 is uncertain with the Spaniard still showing impressive racing skills at this age.
“It has not made me think about that because I am thinking about how I can improve this car, what the next step is we need to get this team winning again, what is the road map to winning another world championship,”
said Hamilton.
Even after a troubled start of the season, Hamilton has enjoyed 4 podiums in a row. In France, he secured the team’s best-ever position yet (P2).
Hamilton is positive about his future in the sport.
“When I talk about fuel left in the tank, I am still fighting for those things and I still feel I have plenty to go. More likely than not, if I stop, I will still have fuel left in the tank. I don’t think I’m going to go as far as completely burnt out and have nothing left but hopefully that’s a long way off,”
the Briton said.
Talking about his chances at the upcoming Hungarian GP, Lewis Hamilton said:
“On pure pace, we don’t have the pace to beat these guys [Ferrari and Red Bull]. Through reliability, we have capitalized on their failure. But, on pure pace, we can’t fight them currently. And we haven’t made a step between last week and this week, which is tough.”
Budapest’s Hungaroring is famous for its tight and twisty turns which makes it difficult to overtake. The track is infamously called the “Monaco without the walls”. A wet qualifying further gimmer the chances of Silver Arrows.
It’s definitely going to be a tough weekend for the Mercedes team.
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