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Spanish Grand Prix 2015: Is Lewis Hamilton delaying new Mercedes deal in case Ferrari look a better prospect?

British driver yet to commit beyond this season

David Tremayne
Friday 08 May 2015 21:16 BST
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Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton

Is Lewis Hamilton deliberately delaying signing a new contract with Mercedes until he has satisfied himself that Ferrari might not be a better bet from next year onwards?

Whenever there is a news vacuum, speculation is always there to rush into it. So it has proved ahead of Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Catalunya near Barcelona, the critical first race in Europe this year.

Every year everybody makes a lot of noise about the upgrades they have brought to their cars here, the things you either could not finish in time or which you have made to overcome shortcomings in the first four races.

Based on Friday’s performances in first practice, not much has changed, despite all the aerodynamic, engine and suspension tinkering that Mercedes and Ferrari have done. World champion Hamilton was 0.4 seconds faster than Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, which is about what we have come to expect over a lap. So while Mercedes have not pulled away, neither have Ferrari closed the outright performance gap. And, as usual, Ferrari’s race pace was promising.

So why all the speculation? Well, in January Hamilton and his Mercedes superiors Toto Wolff and Niki Lauda said signing a new deal was close. They said it again in Melbourne in March and several times since. Lauda now says it could be done by Monaco in a fortnight – the current one runs out at the end of this year.

The Formula One chief executive, Bernie Ecclestone, would love to see him in a red car, with McLaren’s underemployed Fernando Alonso taking his seat alongside Nico Rosberg at Mercedes, and if Hamilton really is interested in a switch, the later he leaves it, the better. It would give him the chance to see just how much progress Ferrari are making and would delay the point at which Mercedes might realise they have to throw everything into helping Rosberg beat him.

Williams driver Valtteri Bottas is also said to be in the frame to replace Kimi Raikkonen alongside Vettel at Ferrari, yet Bottas himself has suggested that his fellow Finn’s contract extension is already done. But in F1 these things have a habit of being less clear-cut in reality and Hamilton would trump both.

Those fuelling the Ferrari rumours also point out how Alonso, as fierce a warrior as they come, seems far too calm about the slow rate of progress of his McLaren-Honda, as if aware of the machinations behind the scenes and the fact that an escape clause might allow him to decamp if a Mercedes seat became vacant. On Friday, however, Jenson Button was a promising seventh in an improved McLaren, four places ahead of the Spaniard on the track where he was concussed in an accident in February.

If Hamilton re-signs for Mercedes in Monaco, we will all know where we are; in the meantime, the speculation continues.

Another Briton saying she is fully confident in her ability to compete in F1 is 32-year-old Scot Susie Wolff, who did another decent job lapping her Williams within a second of team leader Felipe Massa on Friday morning.

“I’m ambitious but I’m also realistic,” she said. “If I didn’t think I was good enough or I didn’t think I was capable of racing at this level, I would have been the first to take myself out of the game,” she said. “But I feel like I’m close, I feel like I have something to bring to the table, and I feel 100 per cent that a woman can compete at this level.”

She said she was frustrated to lose time with a small mistake, but added: “Overall it was positive. It’s so important for me, every time I’m in the car, to perform, because I know what I’m capable of and I always want to show that to the best that it can be.”

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