'I see the mess we're in': Lewis Hamilton criticises F1 chiefs for making races boring and demands change at the top

With bracing honesty, Lewis Hamilton admitted that he could relate to those who found his processional French Grand Prix victory a turn-off, before strongly criticising the FIA, Formula One’s global governing body, for their failure to encourage more competitive racing.

Having attended a recent meeting of the World Motorsport Council in Paris, the five-time world champion claimed to have been deeply unimpressed with what he found. “How it’s set up, just from watching when I was there, it’s not good – really not good,” he said. “They won’t like me saying that. I see the mess we’re in, I see it every year.”

Here lies the perversity of the situation: the finest driver of his generation is offering to help find ways to make F1 a more compelling spectacle, but the sport’s powerbrokers remain stubbornly in hock to the top teams, whose only objective is to protect their pre-eminence.

“Ultimately, the FIA is the governing body and needs to make all the decisions,” Hamilton said, as he faced up to the widespread ennui that greeted his sixth victory in eight races this season. “The teams shouldn’t be involved in that, because they all want to do something for themselves. That’s natural, they’re competitive. It’s the same in football: if all the teams sat in a room and said the sport should be a certain way, they would push and pull for their own benefit. But if you get a central group of people, like the FIA, telling us that their sole job is to make the sport great again, then they should have the power.”

Ross Brawn, the former Ferrari technical director and a racing aficionado to his core, has spent huge effort on devising a fresh sporting template in time for the 2021 regulation changes. Since the start of 2017, only two drivers outside the top three teams have finished on the podium, a situation that Brawn describes as “unacceptable” – quite a statement, given that he was at the helm for Ferrari during all five years of Michael Schumacher’s supremacy.

But such is the complexity of reaching consensus in F1, there is growing doubt as to whether Brawn will be able to force through the radical changes the sport so desperately needs. Hamilton’s motivation in travelling to the Paris talks was to ensure there was some input from the drivers, who have previously been excluded from the process. “I empathise with fans watching and thinking ‘ugh’ about a race like Sunday’s,” he said. “I race my heart out, but it might not be so exciting to watch. That’s why I committed to going to the meeting.”

Even as he maintains a streak of unparalleled dominance on the track, Hamilton, at 34, is fast morphing into F1’s elder statesman. While he has a vested interest in keeping Mercedes at the summit for as long as he competes, he appears preoccupied with ensuring the quality of the racing he leaves behind. “If I consider my legacy, I’d love to look back and say that I was a part of helping that positive change for the fans who are watching F1,” he explained. “That would be a cool thing to be a part of, to be not just a driver with all the titles, but someone who actually cared about the sport.”

For all that he savours a 36-point lead in the championship, Hamilton evidently craves a greater challenge, offering veiled urgings for Ferrari to raise their game. In Austria this weekend, Mercedes stand poised to equal McLaren’s record of 11 consecutive grand prix wins, set in 1988. There is continued talk that Toto Wolff, the team principal, could soon take over as chief executive of F1 from Chase Carey, although Hamilton doubts his credentials for the top job, given his powerful loyalties to the Silver Arrows. “I don’t believe there’s a better manager than Toto in the whole of F1,” he said. “But as humans, we can be biased.”