Hamilton: 'I hope for the fans, we don't see Mercedes dominate 10 years'

'Mercedes project takes time'

Hamilton assumes that Mercedes is on the way up, which is an important reason for him to extend his commitment that expires after this season. For Hamilton, Mercedes really is a long-term project. "I'm not working towards next year, thinking that it's gonna take another four years to get to where we need to be but I'm aware that it does take time," Hamilton spoke about Mercedes' future.

"Of course, in my heart, I'm so hopeful that the decisions we are taking and the direction that we're rolling towards will put us in that target zone, making us able to fight the bulls and be close and be challenging for pole. But if it's not next year, we'll continue to work through it. But in my heart, I truly believe that if it’s not next year, it's the year after. We will be there."

Closing in on Red Bull Racing?

However Mercedes is working hard, Red Bull Racing is not holding back either. In Formula 1, it is common for teams to be dominant for long periods of time until the regulations change thoroughly. Such a change does not happen again until 2026. To increase excitement in the upcoming championships, there are currently sounds of finding ways to bring the field closer together - read Red Bull.

"I don't know what's been proposed. I've not heard anything. We've experienced lots of changes that were put in place to slow us down over the years. And I think it was better for the sport. If you look at 2021, for example, our qualifying pace was amazing. I think it's 2021 or 2020, I can't remember, but when they took away our qualifying mode, for example, brought us closer in qualifying."

'Closer championship behind Red Bull than ever'

According to Hamilton, Mercedes had such a big lead at the time because the engineers had done an 'incredible job'. "But I think from a racing fan perspective, we want to see all of us a lot closer. We've seen quite a good championship this year behind the Red Bulls. Between the Ferraris, Astons, and all the teams are looking a lot closer than ever before. So in some ways, the rule change has worked. In others, there's still some work that needs to be done. If you look at some of the teams who were all capped, but some teams don't have the same resources in terms of whether it's wind tunnel, whether it's stuff that's at the factory that the bigger teams had because they had loads of money to throw it a long, long time ago."

"And they can't catch up now. So there's always work to do, but I think the sport's done a great job. And I do hope for the fans in future, we don't see Mercedes dominate for 10 years, or Ferrari dominate for 10 years or any other team, because I think that's not in the best interest of what us drivers want or what fans want or what the teams want. We want close competition, and I hope that gets better and better," Hamilton said.