Wolff wants Hamilton to sign three-year deal

Aug.6 (GMM) Lewis Hamilton’s boss says he would like to sign up the six-time world champion for the next three years.

At Silverstone a week ago, the championship leader told reporters that he can imagine himself “going for at least three years” longer.

Hamilton denied that talks about extending his contract with Mercedes are already taking place, but team boss Toto Wolff hopes it happens “soon”.

When asked by Canal Plus if he would like to sign 35-year-old Hamilton for the full three years, Wolff answered: “Yes.

“We have good discussions and I am quite positive that we will be able to sign a contract soon,” he told the French broadcaster.

Wolff is also openly saying that he sees Valtteri Bottas as Hamilton’s ideal ongoing teammate.

“Valtteri is doing a good job,” he said. “He won the first race.

“The difference compared to the situation we had with Nico (Rosberg) and Lewis is that we have a good atmosphere now.

“It’s really positive, and productive for the engineers. We don’t have that mistrust that existed between the other two,” Wolff added.

For Mercedes’ rivals, though, stability at Mercedes is not good news.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen is not expecting to be able to beat the black-liveried cars at Silverstone this weekend.

“The Mercedes are just too fast,” said the Dutchman, who played down even the likelihood of a recurrence of serious tyre problems for the German team.

“Even if they have a problem, they can just slow down by half a second per lap and in principle nothing changes,” Verstappen added.

Some have suggested Verstappen should scrap his title-winning focus for 2020 and instead target beating Bottas to the runner-up spot.

“Again, he is normally too fast, but I will keep going for it,” he said.

“We are doing everything we can to make the gap smaller and I will try to make life difficult for him,” said Verstappen.