F1 LIVE – Hamilton to Ferrari prediction made after Mercedes comment

F1 season preview as Max Verstappen looks to defend world title

Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes contract remains a prevalent topic of conversation on the second of three weeks without an F1 race to tuck into. The 38-year-old’s future beyond 2023 is uncertain, and links to an incredible switch to Ferrari refuse to go away.

Hamilton has been widely tipped to leave Mercedes if Toto Wolff and co can’t offer him a championship-winning car. He is still chasing a record-breaking eighth world title after Red Bull have halted the Silver Arrows’ era of dominance in the last two seasons, soon to be three.

Max Verstappen is the new F1 top dog, winning his second of the three races so far this season in the Australian Grand Prix at the start of April. But Mercedes could be confident of maintaining a challenge for second in the constructors’ standings ahead of Ferrari and Aston Martin.

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Hamilton to Ferrari played down

Sky Sports pundit Johnny Herbert has poured cold water over the idea of Lewis Hamilton joining Ferrari.

Herbert has questioned why Hamilton would leave Mercedes for the Scuderia, suggesting the former have more chance of wins.

He said: “As a driver, there’s always the talk about Ferrari being the team that you’ve got to really experience, but I don’t think Lewis is that way.

“He just wants to be able to win races and be the fastest, and he’s got all that from Mercedes for a very good period of his career.”

Mercedes not getting carried away by Australian GP

Mercedes technical director James Allison has suggested that they need to prove that Lewis Hamilton’s podium finish in the Australian Grand Prix wasn’t a freak result.

‘Unusual’ circumstances marred the race in Melbourne as Hamilton finished behind Max Verstappen to claim the Silver Arrows’ first podium of the season.

And Allison believes it’s so early to suggest Mercedes have a package capable of challenging Ferrari and Aston Martin just on the back of that result.

He said: “We expected to be in the fight with Ferrari and Aston Martin and pleased to have our noses in front, but we did expect to be there.

“How much of the overall good results of the weekend was track specific, and how much came from things we did? Time will tell.

“We’ll go to some more very different tracks in the next few weeks, and we’ll see whether this was the sort of initial bellwether of a general uptick in our performance which we hope for, or whether it was related to the quite unusual track conditions that we saw this weekend in Melbourne.”

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