F1 News: Toto Wolf Confirms He Will Be Looking At Lewis Hamilton's Contract Over Winter Break

"There is no firm deadline"

Toto Wolff has confirmed he will be looking at Lewis Hamilton's contract over the winter break. 

The seven-time champion is currently contracted with Mercedes until the end of the 2023 season and has previously expressed interest in signing another long-term contract with the team. 

Mercedes AMG F1 Media

2022 was a difficult year for the team. It was clear straight away at the pre-season testing that they were not going to be at their usual championship-winning performance. The W13 cars had major porpoising issues and once those had been controlled, it revealed many other issues with the cars. 

The team made some significant improvements towards the end of the season and Hamilton's new teammate George Russell got his first career win at the Brazilian Grand Prix, with Hamilton coming in second. 

This was the first season in Hamilton's career that he has not won a single race. However, the Mercedes team have revealed that Hamilton requested they carry out more of the tests and data collection on his car in order to give Russell more of a chance.

Team principal Toto Wolff appeared on the Beyond the Grid podcast where he was asked if Hamilton's contract was on his list of things to do during the winter months. He responded:

“Well the job list is pretty long with what’s needed to be done.

“But certainly Lewis’ contract is one of the topics that we will tackle over the winter. There is no firm deadline.”

When quizzed on Russell gaining more points than Hamilton in the 2022 season, Wolff explained:

“I didn’t really look at the results so much because we didn’t race for wins. And both drivers are calibrated to put themselves in a position to win and the car was simply not good enough. They worked together in trying to get it to a sweet spot and that didn’t really work out.

“So I don’t think it really mattered for them at the beginning whether one of them finished second and the other one third or the other way around, it’s irrelevant and in the same way all the results through the year were irrelevant.

“I’m happy for George that he won his first race and that was important after the Bahrain situation two years ago. But Lewis also told me about not winning a race this season as a first ‘absolutely no problem with that, plays no role.'”

Hamilton has been very open that his dream would be to retire on a championship winning year and Wolff revealed previously that Hamilton had another five years in him. So it seems a contract extension is highly likely but we will wait for the full confirmaiton.