Shovlin about Lewis
“I’ve worked with Lewis now for a long time and he is a driver who has a really impressive feel for what the car is doing,” Shovlin told Motorsport.com in an exclusive interview.
“If you can get the car where he needs it to be, we know far and well what he’s capable of. And, yeah, we’ve worked with each other for sufficiently long enough that we can have whatever conversations need to be had.
“We all like to think we develop as we go through our careers, and if you knew what you know today 10 years ago, then I think we’d all have been more successful.
“Lewis, as a driver, puts an awful lot of effort into looking for where that edge is going to come from. That constant searching for how he can emerge into a new season as an even better driver than the one that we had before is just borne out of his love of winning.
“He doesn’t want to be beaten. He’s very engaged with the engineering process now, he’s talking to all [engineering departments] – on the aerodynamics side, and vehicle dynamics side.
“He’s very familiar with all the people within the team and he knows where to go to ask questions and give feedback. Ultimately, it’s a problem that we’ll all solve together.”
Shovlin thinks that where Hamilton has improved the most is in working out in which areas he needs to devote his key efforts to extract more from a car – and more importantly how to get the team to deliver what he needs.
“I think the mechanism by which he is always looking to improve has always been there, the difference is he has realised how much more he can draw out of the team and the people around him to help that learning and that improvement phase,” explained Shovlin.
“And that’s the thing: he’s become more and more comfortable and settled within the team, and confident and happy to go and speak to different people about different areas. He’s just drawing more effectively on the resource.
“But, ultimately, if he finds an area that he thinks he’s not good enough at, he just solves it by hard work.
“The amount of work a driver has to do these days out of the car, the homework – understanding what the tyres are going to do, what do I need to be doing to manage them well, how am I going to get them at the right window in qualifying – that workload is much higher than it’s ever been.
“And very often you’ll see Lewis as being one of the last drivers to, if not the last driver, to leave the paddock. He’s just going round and round, making sure he knows what it is he needs to do.”
And so on https://www.motorspo...cedes/10422030/
Big money for Lewis from Ineos if this is true, but just a rumour for now...
According to sports business outlet Sportune, Hamilton has been offered a €70m (£62m) per season salary.
It would mark a significant upgrade to his current deal, which reportedly is €45m (£40m).
However, the report says that, unlike his existing contract, the new extension wouldn’t include a €25m (£22m) bonus for being crowned World Champion.
The reported deal that Mercedes is offering Hamilton is said to cover the 2024 and 2025 seasons, meaning he would bag €140m (£123m) in just two years.
It would also see Hamilton continue in F1 into his 40s, with the Briton turning 38 earlier this month.
The French report says that the salary would largely be paid by sponsor Ineos, who has a one-third equal share of the Mercedes F1 team.
https://www.motorspo...cedes-contract/
Edited by ToniF1, 19 January 2023 - 16:39.