Lewis Hamilton hopes Formula 1 makes more changes to close up the field after Red Bull “walked away” in 2022.
Championship-wise, the final four races are largely dead rubber after Max Verstappen clinched his second Drivers’ title in Suzuka and Red Bull is on the brink of claiming their first Constructors’ Championship since 2013.
And speaking back in Singapore, Hamilton admitted seeing the battle for the championship end well before the season finale is far from ideal.
“Definitely, I feel for the fans,” he said. “For everyone and even for us last year, going right down to the wire, that was intense for everybody.
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“It’s never great when the season finishes early. Even when I’ve experienced having it finish early in places like Mexico, for you as the individual, it’s great. But for the actual sport, it’s not spectacular.
“I’m really grateful to have had like 2008, when it right down to the last 17 seconds and obviously last year, pretty much the same thing. Let’s hope for the future it’s a bit better.”
One of the big aspirations of the new regulations for this season was it would reduce the gap between the front and rear of the grid, enabling multiple teams to fight for wins and podiums.
Instead, only the Red Bull and Ferrari drivers have claimed victories while Hamilton, Mercedes teammate George Russell and Lando Norris have finished on the podium.
While that was perhaps to be expected in the first year of the new rules, the seven-time world champion hopes F1 isn’t afraid to take more action in an attempt to level the playing field.
“Yeah, they [the new rules] are supposed to [close up the grid], but it’s not achieved what it was supposed to achieve, so yeah, we failed in that,” he claimed.
“But when you fail once you try again and fail a second time and continue to try, so I hope more changes are made to try and bring all the teams closer and create better quality throughout the racing space.
“It’s my hope that we are all closer so we can have better racing and more overtaking. Red Bull has walked away with it this year. They have done a great job.”
As for Hamilton, he also faces the prospect of 2022 being the first season in which he has not claimed a victory during his F1 career.
However… “Of course, I’m trying to get that win this year, but the record is not that important for me because I don’t really care about records in general,” he stated.
“We have to be realistic, that Red Bull is almost unbeatable.
“It’s going to take some real doing to beat that car. Performance-wise, they are fully ahead of everyone.”