Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton Sign New Contract

Lewis Hamilton signs contract extension with Mercedes worth an estimated £40 million a year

Lewis Hamilton, the current Formula One champion, has signed a new contract with Mercedes that will keep the British driver with the team until 2020. This brings an end of speculation whether he would remain with Mercedes.

Hamilton’s contract was due to expire at the completion of this season. The new contract is reportedly worth £40 million a year. Lewis Hamilton, who does not use an agent to negotiate his contracts, began talking earlier this year with the head of motorsports at Mercedes, Toto Wolf.

When speaking with reporters, the star driver admitted it was his fault the talks were drawn out stating,

“Obviously it’s been drawn out through my fault, really. I really appreciate Toto being so patient with me, because I’m not the easiest. I think most people would not have been given the time frame I chose to take.”

Hamilton admitted that the extra delay in getting the contract in place caused his own team to speculate whether he was considering leaving. He added,

” I’m sure there were questions and discussions over lunch: ‘Is he staying? Is he going? It’s great we can now embark on hopefully a really strong future together.”

Hamilton stated that in his mind, he would only be continuing with Mercedes. He stated that it shows they both trust each other adding that,

“I said to Wolff from Day 1:I’m not looking anywhere else, I’m not talking to anyone else. I’m not investigating to see what other options there are, I’m not playing you against anybody else.”’

While that may have been the case, Lewis was contacted by other teams interested in signing him. This was rumoured to include Red Bull and Ferrari and Red Bull, but Hamilton said he didn’t give it any thought.

For punters, this is good news, especially those who are fans of Mercedes are looking to place wagers on the constructor and driver championship. When it comes to watching the bi-weekly F1 races, live betting is as good as it gets, and with our list of top-rated live betting Formula One sites, the options are excellent.

The last four years has seen Mercedes dominate Formula One, and Lewis Hamilton has been a big part of that. They have won the last four constructor and driver championships. However, this season they are sitting in second place behind Ferrari by twenty points.

In his career, Hamilton has won sixty-five races, of which forty-four of those were with Mercedes. The British driver has been on the podium 124 times and has a career record of seventy-six pole positions. The only other driver to have won more F1 races is Michael Schumacher.

Toto Wolf, while speaking about closing the deal with Hamilton said,

“It’s good to put all of that to rest. We signed the final documents this week and didn’t want to keep people waiting any longer.”

The new contract will run through to the end of the Concorde Agreement. This will see new rules coming into play regarding engines as well as other F1 regulations. One of the biggest changes that will impact top teams is expected will come in the 2021 season. This will dictate the distribution of wealth among teams, budgets and engines. The purposes of those changes is to create a field that is more competitive.

As of yet, Hamilton has not agreed to drive beyond the end of 2020 preferring to see how thing work out. He stated that,

“I’m interested to see how that all plays out, so it didn’t make sense for me to commit into the unknown. You don’t want to put yourself in a corner you can’t move from (so) it’s just a strategic decision.”

Author Noah is our American writer who likes to give his own spin on everything Golf & the NHL he covers mainly the US side of the game as Doug covers the Canada. In his time off he can usually be taking to the greens or on the ice playing some hockey