Formula 1 president and CEO Chase Carey is eager to see Lewis Hamilton continue in the sport as long as possible.

Hamilton’s contract expires at the end of the 2020 F1 season , as does his team Mercedes’ commercial agreement to compete in F1. Both are considering their futures.

But while some have claimed the extent of Hamilton’s domination has been a turn-off, Carey does not agree.

“I hope Lewis races forever,” he said yesterday in Abu Dhabi. “He’s obviously an incredible champion and his success speaks for itself.

“Sports build their heroes. He is a hero second to none in our sport.

“Certainly we hope he races forever – he probably won’t! – but I think he’s got some challenges still ahead of him and we’d like to see him tackle those.”

However Carey also said the likes of Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris shows F1 has “an incredible array of young talent” coming into the sport.

“When you look at Max, he’s been racing a few years, we forget how young he is. But whether it’s Max or Charles or Lando I think we’ve got an incredible and exciting future in those drivers.

“I hope they get a chance to battle with Lewis. But we’ve got to make sure it’s why we work so hard to create, with Jean [Todt, FIA president], the proper pyramid of Formula 3 and Formula 2.

“When we came in there was GP2 and Formula 3, GP3, sort of fragmented not well co-ordinated set of races feeding into Formula 1. I think we tried to create a more proper pyramid and we want to try and strengthen that pyramid and make sure it provides opportunities for young drivers to continue to emerge for drivers to become champions, to continue to compete.

“But for young drivers to get into it, I can’t think of a year that has had a more exciting breadth and depth of young drivers coming into the sport.”

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2019 F1 season