By MALCOLM FOLLEY
Last updated at 11:44 AM on 3rd July 2011
Lewis Hamilton, frustrated at driving an uncompetitive car for a third consecutive season, could be competing in his last British Grand Prix for McLaren next weekend.
The 26-year-old has a break clause in his £75million contract that allows him to leave McLaren in December — 12 months before the end of his five-year deal — unless he is world champion or the team win this season’s constructors’ championship.
With defending world champion Sebastian Vettel taking an 89-point lead over Hamilton to Silverstone and the German’s Red Bull team leading the constructors’ championship by the same margin, McLaren need a remarkable revival in the second half of the season to prevent Hamilton taking up his option.
Flagging: Lewis Hamilton has not had much to cheer about this season, with McLaren failing to consistently trouble the qualifying and race pace of the Red Bulls
Hamilton would not be short of suitors.
Three weeks ago, he met Red Bull team principal Christian Horner at the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal. McLaren attempted to dismiss the meeting as a courtesy visit to Horner’s paddock home, but the reality is that Mark Webber’s contract with Red Bull ends this year and Hamilton would be an obvious replacement.
Mercedes, who have a strong bond with Hamilton through their association with McLaren as engine suppliers — and erstwhile partners before they sold the majority of their shares in the Woking-based team 18 months ago — will also have the British driver on their radar.
He could be seen as the ideal replacement for Michael Schumacher, whose comeback has been unproductive. The 42-year-old seven-time world champion has laboured in the slipstream of team-mate Nico Rosberg, who raced competitively with Hamilton during their karting days in Europe.
Lotus Renault, short of a team leader since Robert Kubica suffered serious injuries on a rally before the season began, could make a pitch for Hamilton.
Hamilton’s comparative lack of success since winning the world championship in 2008, his second season in F1, has stretched his patience.
Last week he admitted: ‘It would suck if I won only one world championship. It would feel like a waste of so many years. I’m here to win. It’s all I care about, it’s what I live for.’
Lifting the gloom: Hamilton won the third race of the season in China
He also offered a clue that, for all his loyalty to McLaren, he is not afraid to broaden his horizons. ‘I don’t have to make any decisions — just yet,’ said Hamilton. ‘Of course, you will always ask questions and look at all options and think, “Is there anything better you can do?”’
Ironically, Hamilton’s get-out clause was negotiated by his father, Anthony, with assistance from a corporate lawyer. Fifteen months ago, Hamilton ‘sacked’ his father from his managerial role and the two men have only recently healed the rift between them.
Hamilton’s next contract, with McLaren or a rival team, will be handled by Pop Idol multi-millionaire
Simon Fuller, whose XIX Entertainment management company handle the affairs of David Beckham and Andy Murray and added the McLaren driver to their selective clientele three months ago.
With so much at stake, the talks are at an early and delicate stage. ‘We don’t discuss contracts but Lewis has been with McLaren since he was 13 and is very happy there,’ said a spokesman for XIX Entertainment.
Yet McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh and Ron Dennis, who drove the team to the summit of the sport and now acts as executive chairman of McLaren Automotive and the McLaren Group, must sense that the threat of losing Hamilton grows more real with each month that passes.
While it would be a wrench for Hamilton to leave a team he has been with for almost 14 years, during which time McLaren invested £5m to transform him from a childhood karting prodigy to Formula One’s youngest-ever world champion — a record now held by Vettel, who is 24 today — there is no doubt that he is arriving at a critical crossroads in his career.
Uneven footing: World champion Sebastian Vettel (right) is well on the way to consecutive titles
Money is not likely to be a sticking point for Hamilton in his negotiations with McLaren. His priorities will be an assurance that they have a faster car on the horizon, one that will enable him to duel with Vettel in the future, and a refinement of personal aspects of his current terms of employment.
Hamilton has just one win this season compared to Vettel’s six victories in a vastly superior car, the brainchild of Red Bull’s brilliant technical director Adrian Newey, who had previously worked his magic for McLaren as well as Williams.
In Valencia last weekend, Vettel won his 16th grand prix to overtake Hamilton, who has 15 wins behind him. ‘On the road he’s on, I just hope he doesn’t get too far ahead of me,’ said Hamilton.
‘He won the world championship last year at a younger age than me, taking me out of the record books.
‘If you have the car, starting from pole position and winning the race is not too hard. Starting from farther back it’s much harder to win.’
Vettel’s one blemish in an otherwise flawless season was to surrender victory in the Canadian Grand Prix earlier this month, when he slithered briefly from the road in atrocious conditions on the last lap, allowing Hamilton’s team-mate, Jenson Button, to steal an unexpected yet brilliant win.
Paying the price: Jenson Button disappears into the distance - and a race win - as Hamilton limps out in Canada
‘No one is perfect,’ said Hamilton, whose race ended in Montreal when he collided with Button when the rainstorm was at its heaviest. But Vettel has had some incredible races. In Barcelona, he had a lot of pressure from me and didn't break. In Montreal, it was easy to make a mistake, the conditions were very tricky — my favourite conditions!
‘That’s why, as I was watching the race from the garage, I was thinking, “I wish I was out there”. It was a hard afternoon for me to watch. But the reality is that Vettel has a lot of qualities. He is massively competitive, massively quick. He also has a strong head on his shoulders. In 2007, it was easy for me to have a strong head on my shoulders because we were competitive, we were winning.’
But as Hamilton and Button attempt to wring every ounce from a car both men hope will, with upgraded parts available at Silverstone next weekend, become more competitive, they must suspect that Vettel and Webber, as well as the Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa, will be hard to beat.
This season’s frustrations have earned Hamilton reprimands from race stewards, as well as some thoughtless criticism from former world champions Niki Lauda and Emerson Fittipaldi.
Hamilton just wants to have the chance to win, never more so than at Silverstone, where he drove magnificently through the rain to secure a memorable triumph in 2008, while he finished second last summer.
‘Second is less devastating but third or fourth don’t mean much to me,’ he said.
At 31, Button is more circumspect but no less hungry to succeed at the British Grand Prix, where he has yet to visit the podium despite 11 attempts.
‘When Honda withdrew from Formula One at the end of 2008, I spent that winter thinking I wouldn’t be back,’ said Button.
‘For the previous two seasons, I’d had tough times when I knew I had no chance of scoring any points unless half the drivers fell off. That’s why I started to do triathlons, to take my mind off racing with a hobby I could enjoy.’
Yet, at the end of 2009, Button was world champion in a Honda car that had been transformed into a Brawn. ‘You learn to take the rough with the smooth, as long as you stay strong in the tough times,’ said Button.
For Hamilton, the biggest question of his life will soon demand an answer a year earlier than most expected: does he stick with McLaren or does he move on and attempt to write in his name in the record books with another team?
Credit: The Daily Mail (www.dailymail.co.uk)
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