Johnny Herbert believes Mercedes should be considering a move for Lando Norris as a replacement for Lewis Hamilton in the future.
Hamilton has had a fantastic career in F1 and it isn’t over yet.
His contract might be up at the end of this season with Merc, but it is expected that he is going to sign an extension, as he and the team work together to try and get back to challenging for championships.
Indeed, Hamilton will surely look at the older Fernando Alonso and believe that he has several years left at the top of the motorsport tree but, of course, eventually every driver has to call it a day and when Lewis does that is going to naturally leave a big void at Mercedes that will need filling.
Plenty of drivers will surely want to be in contention for that seat, as Merc, despite the last year or so being difficult, are one of the strongest outfits on the grid, and Herbert, who recently launched new F1 podcast Lift The Lid alongside Billy Monger, thinks that Lando might be the perfect successor to Hamilton.
“I’d probably try and wiggle a way of making Lando ready,” Herbert said to GIVEMESPORT,” because I see him as one of the better drivers that we’ve got that is probably going to be one of the available ones. That’s who I think I’d be trying to aim for.
“It’s just when that opportunity arises, are you in the right place at the right time for that to happen? Has he got that possibility to keep that McLaren seat for the moment, then to sort of get ready to spring over when the opportunity comes?
“I think in this modern day, Lando would be the one. But if you go outside Lando, I suppose that’s where it becomes a little bit more difficult.”
Norris is contracted to McLaren through to the end of 2025 and is said to earn £16m-a-year as part of that deal, so if Mercedes did want to sign him before then they’d have to pay out a fair bit to release him from his contract.
Ultimately, though, it all depends on Hamilton. If the seven-time champion stays for another couple of years, the F1 driver market could have changed significantly, and who knows who might be the actual successor to the British driver.
Norris is a top class racer, though, and so there’s surely every chance he’ll be in the conversation whenever the news breaks that Hamilton is going to retire.
Billy Monger and Johnny Herbert have recently launched the Lift The Lid podcast to give the inside track on being a racing driver. Subscribe to the Lift The Lid podcast here via your favourite podcast platform.
