Former Aston Martin Technical Director Dan Fallows has said Lewis Hamilton might call it quits on his Formula 1 career in 2026, triggering a driver market shake-up.
Hamilton’s debut season with Ferrari will go down as one of the most disappointing campaigns for the seven-time World Champion.
Not only was he comprehensively outpaced by team-mate Charles Leclerc, but also suffered his first-ever trophy-less year with zero Grand Prix podiums to his name.
To top it all off, the 41-year-old seemed completely defeated by his public struggles to adapt to the Maranello-based team, and its often tricky and inconsistent SF-25 package.
The Briton, who suffered a relatively uncompetitive streak with Mercedes in the ground effects era, got a rude awakening with Ferrari – something that might have finally tipped him over the edge as per Fallows.
“I was going to go for Lewis Hamilton as being the key to the driver market,” he said on the James Allen podcast hinting at Hamilton wanting to end his miseries with uncompetitive packages.
“It’s easy to put him in the same bracket as Fernando Alonso, in that somebody who’s clearly still very, very capable, although he did struggle a bit last year.
“He’s somebody who can definitely turn up the performances when he needs to. The question for me is, has he got the same desire? Has he got the same will to carry on as long as he possibly can, if he’s not in a 100% competitive car?
“Whereas Fernando is driving a lot of other cars, he’s still very keen, he’s got his own karting circuit and so on. I’m not sure Lewis is that committed to racing as a whole. That might be a horrible slight on the man – he’s extremely committed to F1, there’s no doubt about that.
“But I don’t see him as somebody who would necessarily want to carry on just because he loves it. He wants to be competitive, he wants to be in a car that’s capable of getting in those race wins.”
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