Lewis Hamilton’s contract with Mercedes expires after the current season. Because the sporting perspective is unclear and so far no extension is in sight, there has been speculation for a long time about a change in the record world champion. Former F1 driver Johnny Herbert has now also taken part in these.
Johnny Herbert knows Formula 1 like the back of his hand. The Brit was active in the premier class of motorsport for eleven years, including driving alongside F1 legend Michael Schumacher at Benetton in 1995. After the 2000 season, the three-time Grand Prix winner ended his career and has been active as an expert ever since. In this role, the 58-year-old also spoke about a possible change from his compatriot Lewis Hamilton from Mercedes to Ferrari.
“I suppose it depends on what happens at Mercedes,” Herbert told the English “Standard Sport” and added the question of all questions: “Can you still turn the tide?”
The Silver Arrows are struggling for the second year in a row and their current car is again unable to keep up with the clearly superior Red Bulls of double world champion Max Verstappen and his teammate Sergio Pérez.
“If that doesn’t work and Lewis still has that fire in his stomach and thinks this isn’t the right place for him, then where is he going?” Herbert added to answer this topic with further reflections himself: “Would he go to Ferrari? Does he want to go there because he thinks he can win a championship there? Would he feel like he could take his energy and people from Mercedes there, like Michael Schumacher did, and that he could actually change it and steer it in a positive direction?”
Formula 1 | Herbert: Hamilton lacks the sixth sense
Even if the now 38-year-old answered all of these questions with “yes”, a change would be daring. Because Hamilton’s “problem is the time”, emphasized Herbert, who attested to the seven-time world champion, however, that he still had the speed and the necessary hunger to achieve the eighth and thus the sole record title.
But Hamilton has to be careful. Because the offspring who are already sawing at the veteran’s monument have an advantage. “The biggest difference is that most of the great drivers of the current young generation have something that Lewis has never been comfortable with and want to put all their energies into, which is simulation,” said Herbert. As a result, pilots like Verstappen, Russel and Co., unlike Hamilton, would have a “sixth sense”.