Lewis Hamilton has found himself at the centre of widespread rumours about his F1 future and whether or not now is the time he steps aside and into retirement.<\/p>\n
The Ferrari driver endured a torrid Hungarian Grand Prix weekend, which topped off an underwhelming first ‘half’ season with the Italian team.<\/p>\n
Prior to joining the Scuderia, the seven-time F1 drivers’ champion was already the target of negativity and criticism for the difficult way in which his Mercedes tenure came to a close, but since moving to Maranello, it has reached fever pitch.<\/p>\n
The current speculation engulfing the British driver is a consequence of a difficult opening 14 rounds with Ferrari, which has failed to produce even a grand prix podium or come close to living up to the pre-season hype.<\/p>\n
Hamilton has scored 109 points, whilst Charles Leclerc has taken 151, 42 more. Most damning, however, is that the 40-year-old’s team-mate has reached the rostrum five times, whilst he has had to settle for only a sprint win and a further sprint podium.<\/p>\n
The disappointment culminated in a crestfallen Hamilton at the Hungaroring, where he branded himself “absolutely useless” and suggested Ferrari needed to “change driver”, a comment that has exacerbated the calls for him to retire, despite being contracted until at least the end of next year.<\/p>\n
But it nonetheless raises the question of who would be an appropriate replacement for the 105-time grand prix winner, and in a recent poll conducted by RacingNews365, a plurality of voters threw their support behind Carlos Sainz returning to the seat Hamilton took from him.<\/p>\n
Over 28 percent of respondents backed the Williams driver, who secured over 10 percent more of the vote than the next-most chosen candidate, Haas driver and Ferrari junior Oliver Bearman.<\/p>\n
Check out the full results from the latest poll by RacingNews365 below and let us know what you think by leaving a comment!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton has found himself at the centre of widespread rumours about his F1 future and whether or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,827,817,830,828,831,829,826,813,816,823,825,824,822,85],"class_list":["post-56700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}