3 Years After Accusing FIA of Slowing Down Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton Asks Same Help to Halt Max Verstappen Dominance

Lewis Hamilton and the FIA haven’t really seen eye-to-eye. Back in 2020, when the governing body of the sport introduced a ban on ‘party’ engine modes, the Briton was very vocal about how the FIA was bringing in mandates to specifically slow the Brackley-based team down. Now, three years later, in 2023, the 7x champion has called on the FIA to do the same to put an end to Max Verstappen and Red Bull’s dominance, as per reports on Twitter.

Verstappen has been in stellar form recently with the Bulls. The Dutch lion has amassed three consecutive championships with the Milton-Keynes-based team since 2021. And this year, his dominance has seen multiple records being broken and set.

Lewis Hamilton says the data download he got from following Max Verstappen’s Red Bull closely in Austin’s #F1 sprint race has exposed the work Mercedes still has to do.

⬇️https://t.co/pH8T4cmWfi

— Motorsport.com (@Motorsport) October 22, 2023

In the backdrop of Verstappen’s robotic string of form, Hamilton has come out with an alarming reality about fan engagement dropping within the sport as Verstappen keeps dominating. Thus, the 7x champion expects some measures to be put in place to keep the allure of the sport alive.

Lewis Hamilton calls on the FIA to impede Max Verstappen

Hamilton has tried to appeal to the commercial side of the sport by highlighting the drop in fan engagement to gee the sport on to impede Verstappen’s seemingly endless dominance. The 38-year-old wants to see the FIA intervene to ensure that the sport keeps its core values of competition intact.

He said (as quoted on Twitter), “[Verstappen’s dominance] has obviously heavily impacted on competition [which] is what people want to see. We have to make sure that we’re making the right decisions, or the governing body is making the right decisions, to keep us close and with great racing right to the end.”

#F1: Lewis Hamilton on Red Bull’s domination: “I think you’ve seen the social engagement drop a huge amount this year. I think, within our sport, we have to continue to work on making sure we’re having close racing.”

“[Verstappen’s dominance] has obviously heavily impacted on…

— deni (@fiagirly) October 22, 2023

One of the biggest gripes that Hamilton has with the Bulls is the fact that their supreme car philosophy allows them to focus on ‘next year’ very quickly. Thus almost always giving them a head start. That’s why Hamilton wants a rule in place where no team can start working on the next year’s car earlier than the competition.

Hamilton wants to tie Red Bull’s hands with 2024 challenger

When addressing Red Bull’s dominance and their liberty to work on the next year’s car early, Hamilton said, per The Race, “I don’t think we need that in the sport. Just from my personal experience, when you’re so far ahead, you’re 100 points ahead, you don’t really need to do a lot more development on your car, so you can start earlier on your next car.”

But Red Bull have earned that luxury. The RB19 is just so pacey that even if they had abandoned the concept for this year, the teams couldn’t have developed fast enough to beat them in 2023. Hence, they can focus on 2024 far earlier than any of their rivals can.

Verstappen had only this to say, “Life is unfair as well so… it’s not only in Formula 1.”