Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has declared a decision on Lewis Hamilton’s contract must be made before the end of the year. Despite their unprecedented success together, Hamilton and Mercedes are yet to agree a new deal in talks that have been ongoing for 12 months.
It is highly likely Hamilton will remain with the Silver Arrows but the lack of a resolution means nothing is certain.
Hamilton is the highest-paid driver in the sport on £40million-a-year and Wolff promises that the British star will continue to have the best car and the biggest salary.
“It must be this season. You can’t start a new year without knowing what your driver line-up is,” Wolff told Channel 4 when asked if there was a deadline for Hamilton’s contract to be signed.
“Having said that, I’m pretty sure it’s going to continue like it is.
“With the intensity of this season we just didn’t have the time to spend the day properly with each other because you want to recover in those days between.
“We keep it pretty loose, and at a certain stage we’ve already said we’ve got to sit down and take the old contract out that we haven’t looked at since three years ago and say ‘okay, what do we want to change in that?’
“He was always the highest-earning driver of his generation and he always will be,” Wolff confirmed.
“What we have allowed him to do is to follow his other hobbies and passions. We totally embrace his way of living, his travelling, which is totally different from any of the other racing drivers, and I respect that.
“The deal is performance. The performance from our side, to bring him a car that is able to win, and performance from his side to be the quickest driver out there, and he’s never failed to do that and I hope we’ve never failed him either.”
And Wolff says the team will do something creative when the record is beaten.
“We believe very much in karma and you need to be able to let things happen and, certainly, who would have ever imagined that somebody is going to break that record of 91 wins,” said Wolff.
“If that were the case, I’m sure we are going to come up with some creative ideas [to mark it].”