Formula 1 is in a off-cycle year for most of the grid’s contracts, but there’s considerable intrigue around two big players who could still shake up the sport.
After all, last year was supposed to be a sedate silly season, but it required the retirement of only one driver — Sebastian Vettel — to set off one of the most chaotic driver market chain reactions in years.
While it’s difficult to imagine an Oscar Piastri-esque contract bomb blowing up this year, the fact Lewis Hamilton is yet to renew terms at Mercedes means he remains a live option in the market.
Daniel Ricciardo is also the source of considerable speculation. He’s back in F1 not to race at AlphaTauri but to take Sergio Pérez’s seat, and to an extent it’s in his hands to accelerate towards his end game.
With as many as four other teams with drivers up for renewal, there’s still plenty of combustible potential in the next few months as silly season draws to a close.
Fox Sports podcast Pit Talk unpacked the market in its latest episode.
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LEWIS HAMILTON’S UNSIGNED CONTRACT
Despite most of his frontrunning rivals being all signed up, Hamilton is out of contract this year and yet to put pen to paper.
Despite insistence from both Hamilton and team boss Toto Wolff that the deal is all but done — or “emotionally” done in Wolff’s words — we’re now closer to season’s end than its start and there’s been no more news about the seven-time champion’s future.
But there’s little genuine speculation that anything other than a renewal is on the cards — eventually.
“To begin with, there are no alternatives for him short of deciding to retire, which he’s at no point suggested is on his mind for next year,” Pit Talk host Michael Lamonato said. “He’s emphasised many, many times he intends to continue, and with Mercedes. It seems like it’s surely a matter of time.”
This also isn’t the first time a Hamilton contract negotiation has been drawn out, nor is it the longest winded of his deals.
Hamilton fell out of contract in 2021 and had to sign a temporary extension to start that season before agreeing to his substantive current deal later that year.
“That was a negotiation process that was exactly the same: ‘Oh yeah, we’ll get it done, we’ll get it done’ all year, and then, ‘It’s not done. But it’ll be fine, we’ll get it done’,” Pit Talk co-host Mat Coch said. “And then eventually it got across the line.
“He’s still hungry for that eighth world championship. That’s what’s keeping him going. I don’t think he’s going to give up on that any time soon, and you’d have to think that a new contract would take him through to the next generation of rules coming in, which is 2026. So you’d think there’s probably two or three more years on top of what he’s already got left in him.
“It’s just a matter of time. I think it’s going to be done.”
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ALPHATAURI’S DRIVER CONUNDRUM
Short of a Hamilton bombshell, Ricciardo’s sudden return to the grid with AlphaTauri after just 10 races on the sidelines will be the year’s biggest driver-market move, and it has the potential to echo into the next two seasons.
Ricciardo is specifically targeting a return to Red Bull Racing in Sergio Pérez’s seat, and the Mexican’s underperformance this year has allowed for flourishing speculation he could be set for a promotion as early as 2024.
But the Red Bull program has been careful to play that down as an option.
“He’s there specifically on a six-month loan, and in the last week Christian Horner has been saying, ‘Well, if he does well, he will not be at Red Bull Racing next year’,” Lamonato said.
“He’s said this many times, but he emphasised it again. If he does well, he will get potentially a 12-month extension at AlphaTauri to prove whether or not he can get into Red Bull Racing in 2025.”
Arguably more interesting — and with more potential to influence the driver market — is the flipped power dynamic at AlphaTauri, where Yuki Tsunoda made himself the undisputed team leader at the start of the season but now finds himself battling again to prove his worth.
“The pressure in AlphaTauri seems to be on Yuki’s side of the garage more than Daniel’s, which is a fascinating thing two race weekends into his return,” Coch said.
“In Hungary [Daniel] overdelivered, in my opinion. He beat Yuki in every meaningful session — qualifying and the race. In Belgium it was more balanced, and particularly on Sunday Tsunoda performed better.
“So it’s one-all at this point, but that it’s one-all, not two-nil in favour of Tsunoda, is interesting.
“After three years at the end of this season in Formula 1, the question is: has Tsunoda peaked? Is this as good as he’s going to get?
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“We know how good Daniel can be, so it’ll be the comparison between Yuki and Daniel inside AlphaTauri, because neither of them is going to Red Bull next year — Sergio Pérez is in that drive.
“No matter how much we want Daniel to be there, Sergio Pérez will be in that seat next year alongside Max Verstappen unless he has some almighty fall-off in the second half of the year, and I can’t see that happening.”
There’s also Ricciardo’s marketing power to take into account, particularly given AlphaTauri’s pending rebrand with the intention of giving the team a better defined identity, likely alongside a high-profile title sponsor.
“I wonder if there’s a marketing value that it’s almost better to park [Ricciardo] there and allow him to retire on his own terms — or ‘retire’ on his own terms.
“If he gets through this year okay, give him another year, and then if it’s not working at the next year, allow him to announce that he’s not going to continue even if it’s not his decision.”
Hamilton might be the biggest part of the driver market, but Ricciardo’s return has made AlphaTauri’s line-up the most movable.
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ASTON MARTIN’S LONG-TERM DILEMMA
Fernando Alonso has been one of the year’s best performers, but teammate Lance Stroll has disappeared in the Spaniard’s shadow. They’re arguably the sport’s most mismatched pairing, with Fernando outscoring Lance at faster than three points to one.
But there’s no real sense Stroll is under pressure despite what seems to be a rolling contract, thanks largely to him racing for the team owned by his billionaire father, Lawrence.
“Lance Stroll is a perfectly fine racing driver,” Lamonato said. “He’s fast enough to have had a shot in Formula 1. The bigger question is: if he were in any other context, would he have avoided being replaced for this long?”
Mat Coch thought it was only his familiar connection keeping him in a frontrunning seat, suggesting there’ll be no appetite for change at Aston Martin management at the end of the year.
“If you’re in charge of Aston Martin, if your name is Mike Krack and you don’t have Lawrence Stroll to report, you’ve got any other team owner in pit lane, you’ve probably got the licence to replace Lance,” he said. “I wonder if Mike does.”
ALFA ROMEO’S HOLDING PATTERN
Sophomore Zhou Guanyu is up for renewal again this year, and though the points picture doesn’t show it, the Chinese driver has made a step forward to challenge Valtteri Bottas’s status as undisputed team leader.
Combined with the switch to Audi not being due until 2026, there’s little momentum for a line-up change while the team consolidates its position.
“I don’t expect there to be any significant change there, purely because off track there’s so much happening behind the scenes,” Coch said. “They’re recruiting, they’re in the process of transitioning ownership as well.
“I think they want stability as much as they can. If they use known-quantity drivers, I think that’s probably the way they’ll go.
“I had a chat with Zhou Guanyu’s manager, and there’s no concern there. They’re quite happy with his performance. I guess the fact that he’s beating Valtteri, a driver who’s won 10 grands prix — he’s put in a good account for himself.
“I don’t see anyone that’s out there in the market replacing him.”
HAAS’S BAD EXPERIENCE
Kevin Magnussen dominated Haas last year in a strong comeback-campaign performance, but he’s been one-upped this season by Nico Hülkenberg, who returned to the sport after a three-year hiatus from full-time racing and has shown the Dane the way.
Magnussen is out of contract this season, but he remains popular at the team, and there’s an acknowledgment that Haas car’s Sunday problems are hurting his ability to perform at his best.
Arguably more important, though, is that Haas has developed an aversion to risking its seats on new drivers, giving his incumbency power.
“The team after last year and particularly after the year before that have been very eager to say they don’t want rookies, so that eliminates anyone who hasn’t got contemporary experience,” Lamonato said.
WILLIAMS’S ROOKIE TRIAL
The season’s last remaining rookie, Logan Sargeant, is arguably the driver most at risk purely because of Williams’s history of taking young drivers from bigger teams on loan, and there are several junior drivers knocking on the door to F1 and finding the grid jammed.
“If we wind back 12 months during that whole Oscar Piastri contract recognition board thing, we know that Alpine had agreed a deal for Oscar to go to Williams for two years, so that second drive at Williams is negotiable,” Coch said.
“Even if it’s not the most desirable seat, it’s still a seat on the Formula 1 grid for the likes of [F2 race winners] Theo Pourchaire, Jack Doohan, Fred Vesti.
“Basically they need to leave Formula 2 at the end of the season, so Logan not only has to deliver on track but he also has to be savvy enough off it to maintain that position, because there will be those who come knocking and he doesn’t have a deal.
“For mine Logan is the most at-risk driver on the grid for next year.
“But I still don’t see the team changing, because the drivers aren’t the limiting factor.”
