Hamilton wary over losing ‘chaos’ through drastic driver market change

Lewis Hamilton has suggested he is against making changes to how the Formula 1 driver market is structured to maintain the season-long “chaos”.

The sport's current driver market has seen various moves already with Hamilton moving to Ferrari and Nico Hulkenberg to Stake for next year.

Various other moves are expected to be announced in the coming months, with no fixed timeline present in F1 compared to other sports, where deals must be concluded within a certain timeframe.

With Hamilton being the first driver this year to confirm his racing plans for 2025, the seven-time world champion declared his excitement to see how the rest of the grid fills up.

“That’s a new one,” Hamilton told media including RacingNews365 when the prospect of a transfer window was proposed. 

“I haven't thought about it. I think it's really exciting in the other sports like in the NFL for example.

“But I think it's quite exciting now. No one knows who's going where, obviously, bit by bit, you see it through drips throughout the season.

“When you do have drivers moving around, it does cause this bit of chaos.

“I saw F1 post the other day that there are still many seats that are not yet signed up. It's quite an exciting time. For us. We are lucky, we feel very fortunate that we've got something locked in.

“That really enables you to plan for your future and really channel your energy. But it's exciting for us to now see where everyone is moving.”

'No need to copy other sports'

Alpine's Pierre Gasly, whose team has been involved in driver market headlines of late, concurred with Hamilton.

The Enstone-based squad confirmed earlier this week that Esteban Ocon will leave the team at the end of the year.

Several names have been linked to replace the 28-year-old, while Gasly himself is also out of contract.

The one-time grand prix winner, who joined Alpine at the start of 2023, does not believe F1 needs to adopt another sport's system to create excitement.  

“I think it's pretty exciting times at the moment with how things are and since the start of the year, I think you guys [the media] wrote a lot about it and kept everyone very busy,” he said.

“No, I think it's fun. We don't need to copy everything that others are doing.

“It’s always been the case in F1 and I think it works well that way.”