Champion Red Bull's Dutch driver Max Verstappen (right) greets second-placed Mercedes' British driver Lewis Hamilton after the Abu Dhabi F1 Grand Prix at the Yas Marina Circuit on 12 December, 2021. Photo: AFP / Andrej Isakovic
Seven-times Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton has suggested rivals Red Bull could be ahead of the rest of the field for years to come after his Mercedes team suffered their worst performance in more than a year on Monday.
The Briton, who is an honorary Brazilian citizen, finished eighth in the Sao Paulo Grand Prix with team mate George Russell retiring.
Team principal Toto Wolff said Mercedes' worst showing since the 2022 Singapore Grand Prix, where Hamilton and Russell finished ninth and 14th respectively, was 'unacceptable'.
"We're losing so much time on the straights, there's nothing I can do about it, and then we're just sliding through the corners," Hamilton told reporters at Interlagos.
Mercedes won in Brazil with Russell last year, Hamilton finishing second, but nobody could beat Red Bull and Max Verstappen this year.
The Dutch driver has dominated the season, taking a record-extending 17th win on Sunday after securing his third world title last month in Qatar with six grands prix and two sprint races to spare.
"The Red Bull is so far away, I think they're probably going to be very clear for the next couple of years," said Hamilton, who indicated he was counting down the days to be free of this season's car.
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Formula One's next major rule change is not until 2026.
Hamilton is fighting Red Bull's Sergio Perez for second place overall, but the Mexican outscored him in Sao Paulo and now leads by 32 points with two races remaining.
Wolff said the Brazil race showed Mercedes had to make fundamental changes for next year.
"Totally baffling," he said of Sunday' showing. "We are a proper structure, solid team, and that didn't look like a solid team."
Hamilton said that ultimately all he could do was try to remain optimistic, but his boss voiced a different stance.
"In 13 years I've never felt optimistic or confident, but it's maybe more my problem and my brain," said Wolff, whose team won eight consecutive constructors' championships between 2014 and 2021.
"What we know is that we're changing the car completely."
Red Bull boss Christian Horner suggested McLaren, who had Lando Norris finish second in Brazil and use Mercedes engines, could be contenders next season.
"It's been different people at different times during the year, so I think we just keep focusing on ourselves and whoever's behind us on the timesheet is almost irrelevant," he said.
"As long as we're at the top of it, that's what we're focused on."
Verstappen a record-breaker
Verstappen's 17th win of the Formula One season rewrote the record book and established the triple world champion as the most dominant driver the sport has ever seen over the course of a campaign.
Photo: DPPI
Until the Sao Paulo Grand Prix at Interlagos, the highest win percentage for a season was the 75 percent of late Italian champion Alberto Ascari who won six out of eight world championship races with Ferrari in 1952.
Verstappen's tally so far from 20 races puts his percentage at 85 percent, and even if he does not win the remaining two rounds of the season in Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi, he will still finish above 77 percent.
Not that the Dutch 26-year-old was paying too much attention to the statistics when asked how much the numbers resonated and motivated him.
"It's not about that. I mean, it's not something that when I joined Formula One, I need to have a 75 percent win record over a season you know," he told reporters.
"These kinds of things come along when everything just works really well. I feel good in the car, the car is very competitive, and the team barely makes mistakes as well. So then you can get a season like we are having.
"For me it's more about just enjoying the moment and trying to maximise every single opportunity."
Verstappen took a then-record 15 wins in 2022 but an unprecedented run of 10 successive victories from May to September and a new ongoing streak of five in a row could mean he ends this year with 19 out of 22 -- an 86.3% win rate.
His 19 podiums for the year so far are also a record, even if seasons were far shorter in the old days, as are the 524 points scored, although scoring systems have also become far more generous.
He has led 922 laps, another record for a season, and counting.
The gap between him and team mate Sergio Perez, second in the standings, is 266 points -- way more than the record margin of 155 points between first and runner-up set by Sebastian Vettel with the same team in 2013.
That same gap is also bigger than Vettel's entire points haul (256) in winning the 2010 title.
Dutch F1 driver Max Verstappen of Red Bull Racing Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Verstappen has led the championship since the Spanish Grand Prix of May 2022 and is guaranteed to end the season with a record run of 39 races in a row as leader.
He has won more times (11) from pole position in a season than any other driver, after last year setting a record for most wins in a season not from pole (nine).
Red Bull's 19th win of the campaign equalled Mercedes' 2016 record and broke their rivals' record from that same season of most laps led (1,055).
"We're talking about one of the best drivers in Formula One ever, in one of the most dominating cars," commented McLaren's Lando Norris, second on Sunday, when putting his own performance into context.
"One of the most dominated years in Formula One history."
- Reuters