After winning the world championship last season, Max Verstappen signed a bumper contract with Red Bull. His contract extension with the Austrian team means that he will stay with them until the end of 2028. When Lewis Hamilton was asked about Verstappen’s contract extension, he revealed he does not plan to stay in the sport until 2028.

The Mercedes driver would be in his mid-40s when Max‘s contract with Red Bull expires.

“I haven’t thought about that number, cos I’m 37, a bit to go! I don’t plan to be here close to that age. Hopefully, I’ll have something else fun to do,” said Hamilton.

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This is the first time, but the British driver has given many hints about retirement. Before the beginning of the season, he mentioned he had no plans to stop and was motivated for 2022.

I think we have far bigger challenges this time: Lewis Hamilton

As reported by Autosport, Hamilton faced some issues during his running on the new 2022 cars on the last day of testing. Lewis was all over the place because of the car. He mentioned the 2022 cars differ vastly from previous iterations and the team has bigger challenges ahead of them.

“There’s a lot different. It’s not as good… I don’t think we’re going to make it look as good as we did last year with a difficult session we had in practice and then switch over to the race,” said Hamilton.

“I think we have far bigger challenges this time, and they are not one-week turnarounds. I think they will take a little bit longer. But from what I’m told, we have a considerable amount of pace to find,” said the Mercedes driver.

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It would be interesting to see if Mercedes can tackle their issues ahead of the first race of the season next week. This is arguably the first time since 2014 that they are facing much tougher competition on the grid in form of Ferrari and Red Bull. Hamilton and the German team would hope that they have a more stable car throughout the season to challenge their rivals.