Lewis Hamilton is the most experienced driver on the Formula 1 grid after Fernando Alonso. His immense amount of experience gives him great insight into the sport and its regulations. In a recent interview with Sky Sports, Hamilton proposed a rule change that should take place in the future.
Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton have had an intense rivalry since the 2021 season. Although Mercedes is not currently in the Championship battle with Red Bull, they are trying to find their way back up.
Prior to the 2023 Austrian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton told Sky Sports:
“I think the FIA should probably put a time when everyone is allowed to start developing for the next year’s car. So August 1, that’s when everybody can start, so that no one can get an advantage from the next year. Because that sucks.”
Lewis Hamilton believes the FIA should select a date from which teams are allowed to start on next season’s car development to prevent some getting a head start. 👀 pic.twitter.com/oGADZTLqw3
— Sky Sports F1 (@SkySportsF1) June 29, 2023
According to the current rule, teams can start developing next year’s car at any time during the season. This gives the dominant team an advantage as they can start focusing on next year’s car sooner than others.
In reply to this, Max Verstappen said:
“We weren’t talking about that when he was winning his Championships, right? So I don’t think we should now,” Verstappen told Sky F1. That’s how Formula 1 works.”
Max Verstappen finds it amusing that Lewis Hamilton did not mention this when Mercedes were dominating the sport back in the 2010s.
Did Lewis Hamilton direct his statement toward Red Bull?
After Max Verstappen made gave his reply to Hamilton’s statement, Lewis Hamilton wanted to clear things out.
“It’s not like aimed at any one particular person or anything,” he is quoted by Crash.net. “It’s just that obviously in my 17 years of being here… before even I got here, you would see periods of dominance.”
“It continues to happen. I think as a sport, we do at some stage – I was really fortunate to have one of those periods that Max is having now but with the way it’s going, it will continue to happen over and over again.”
“And I don’t think we need that in the sport. Just from my personal experience, when you’re so far ahead, you’re 100 points ahead, you don’t really need to do a lot more development on your car, so you can start earlier on your next car.”
“With the budget cap that means spending that year’s car money on next year’s car, but if everyone had a cut-off, a time, everyone knew that it could then start – whatever date it is, October, probably too late, but August 1 [for example], something like that, that nobody has a head start and it’s a real race in that short space of time for the future car.”
“We weren’t talking about that when he was winning his championships…so I don’t think we should now”
Max Verstappen responds to Lewis Hamilton’s comments about a specific car development start date. pic.twitter.com/dLqxGhbzpA
— Sky Sports F1 (@SkySportsF1) June 29, 2023
“I don’t know, maybe that would help everyone be more level and closer the following year. I might be wrong but something’s got to change because if you continue having- when we were winning world championships we could start earlier than everybody else.”
“Then there are teams that weren’t competitive so then they didn’t bother working on that current car… you look at Brawn, they just focused fully on next year’s car from the beginning and then they turned up next year and blitzed everybody.”
“And that shouldn’t be possible, in my opinion. It’s not for me to judge but it would be cool to see in the next 20 years that if we don’t have huge bands of time where one team can be too far ahead. We want to see better racing.”
Lewis Hamilton is the most successful driver in Formula 1. He has more race wins than any other driver in Formula 1 history. He is the first Formula 1 driver to reach 100 wins. Hamilton and Mercedes dominated the sport during the turbo-hybrid era for 8 consecutive years.
Before the Lewis Hamilton-Mercedes domination, it was Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull. In the early 2000s, it was Ferrari and Michael Schumacher. Now it is Max Verstappen and Red Bull. Hamilton seems to want to end this pattern for the betterment of the sport.
When a team dominates the sport for multiple years, fans tend to lose interest. This affects Formula 1’s ratings. The ratings of the sport were one of the highest it’s ever been during the 2021 season when Max Verstappen was challenging Lewis Hamilton for the Championship.
Lewis Hamilton’s proposed rule change would give an equal opportunity for all teams for developing a quick car for next year. Let us now see if the FIA acknowledges and considers Hamilton’s proposed changes.