Seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton says he is in talks over a new contract with Mercedes and remains hopeful it will be sorted out “in the coming weeks.”
The F1 great is out of contract at the end of the year. Hamilton has been linked by some media reports with a potential move to Ferrari should he decide not to re-sign with Mercedes.
But the 38-year-old British driver said on Thursday at the Monaco Grand Prix that there has been no approach from Ferrari, and his team is working things out with Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff.
“Naturally, in contract negotiations there's always going to be speculation,” Hamilton said. “My team's working closely behind the scenes with Toto. We're almost at the end of having a contract ready."
Hamilton, with 103 grand prix wins, was pressed further as to when the contract might be signed.
“That’s what we’re working towards, so hopefully in the coming weeks," he said. “I've got a great team in the background doing all the work.
Hamilton was relieved he no longer does his own negotiating.
“Having the team focus on that so I can just do my job, that’s a much better position that I was in before,” he said. "Because I remember I used to do my negotiations on my own, and it was very stressful.”
Hamilton, 38, will get his first taste of a major Mercedes upgrade in practice on Friday which the seven-time world champion hopes will haul him up the grid.
Hamilton qualified 13th at the last race in Miami before driving well to finish sixth, but he is already 63 points behind Red Bull's Max Verstappen in the championship standings.
However, the star driver insisted Mercedes' dethroning as kings of F1 will not impact his decision to re-sign with the Brackley side.
"We are still a championship-winning team," added the British driver. "We have just had the wrong car, and there have been decisions that have been made over the past two years that have not been ideal. We are working our way through that.
"We have a new upgrade this weekend. The team have worked incredibly hard to bring this upgrade to this race after we decided that was the direction we wanted to take.
"Although this is not the best track to see it come to fruition, we will hopefully get a better experience of that at the next race."
This weekend's race in Monaco will have many intriguing battles. Fernando Alonso is third in the drivers' title race on 75 points behind Verstappen on 119 and Sergio Perez, a street circuit specialist who won last year's race and more recently in Jeddah and Baku, on 105.
Local hero Charles Leclerc of Ferrari, who has never tasted success at his home event on what was once his bus-route to school, will hope for a change of fortune as he bids for a third consecutive Monaco pole position.
Since 2017, he has accumulated only 12 points - for finishing fourth in 2022 - and is long overdue a result that reflects his precious talent, Ferrari's form and reliability notwithstanding.
