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Hello. Hello and a very warm welcome to a very special edition of the late breaking F1 podcast. Just a quick breaking news announcement as of course it happens on a Thursday.

You know it's going to happen on a Thursday.

Both Mercedes drivers have been announced

as signing multi-year deals until the end of 2025, which of course takes them up to the end

of the current regulations, with 2026 set to be the new power unit regulations coming in. It does

mean that Lewis Hamilton will be driving with the team until he's 40 years old, at the very least. Interesting development there. We'll get into it.

Okay, breaking news. Finally. Finally, this supposed to happen months ago. But finally, Lewis Hamilton has been

announced as staying with Mercedes. Can you believe it? I mean, he's being a very, a very naughty

boy because he's classically, the him and Mercedes have announced not on the day that we

record our podcast. So you're guessing this short form, emergency late-breaking podcast from Ben and I. If you're listening, you're on the podcast format, but it's also on YouTube so you can go and see us visually do it there. But, like, I mean, he didn't wait as long as he did last time, right? He hasn't left it to the first race of the season. He's actually in the current season at least. So well done him. But then what do you think it all means for Lewis, for Mercedes, for the team? Yeah. Firstly, just to mention, of course, pretty fresh news. So we will be getting into more of the details on the full podcast. So don't you worry about that.

What does it mean for Hamilton? What does it mean for Mercedes? Certainly from Hamilton's perspective,

I think this is just a realization that at this point in his career, and I don't just mean a racing

career. I mean it more of him as a brand, as a personality, because we know he's much more

than just a Formula One driver at this point. I think this is just a realization that Formula One

acts as the best vehicle for him to achieve within the sport, but also about the sport at this

moment in time. I never bought into the rumours that Ferrari might happen or another

team might be a possibility because he's been wed to Mercedes since pretty much we were

born. Going back to the late 90s, we were a couple years old. He has had some association with

this team. A couple of down years

was never realistically going to be enough to see him go to another team. Now, it was a genuine

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