Lewis Hamilton on F1 Future Beyond ’23: ‘I’m Still on the Mission’

The seven-time champion’s contract with Mercedes is set to expire after next season.

Seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton has reached the mountaintop of his sport time and time again. But in the midst of what’s been, by his standards, a disappointing season, the 37-year-old addressed his driving future, admitting that, though he’s thought about retirement, he still has motivation to continue racing for years to come.

Hamilton’s current contract with Mercedes expires after next year, leading some to speculate that he could call it a career at that time.

“I’ll be lying if I said that I hadn’t thought about extending,” Hamilton said in an interview with Chris Heath of Vanity Fair. “I’m still on the mission, I’m still loving driving, I’m still being challenged by it. So I don’t really feel like I have to give it up anytime soon.”

Hamilton is currently in sixth place in the driver standings, 112 points behind Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen. In the interview, Hamilton addressed last season’s controversial finale, in which Verstappen beat Hamilton on the final lap. After a safety car was deployed, race officials allowed the five lapped cars that sat between the first-place Hamilton and Verstappen to be lapped, shrinking the gap between the pair. Verstappen was able to overtake Hamilton on the final lap to win the title.

The Mercedes driver addressed that race in the interview, saying the outcome as “my worst fears came alive.”

"You see things start to unfold and my worst fears came alive," Hamilton said. "I was like, there's no way they're going to cheat me out of this. There's no way. That won't happen. Surely not.

“I don’t know if I can really put into words the feeling that I had. I do remember just sitting there just in disbelief. And realizing I’ve got to undo my belts, I’ve got to get out of there, I’ve got to climb out of this thing, I’ve got to find the strength. I had no strength. And it was one of the toughest moments, I would say, that I’ve had in a long, long time. I knew what had happened. I knew what decisions had been made and why. Yes, I knew that something wasn’t right.”