- Hamilton receives blunt retirement advice from former F1 driver Johnny Herbert.
- Herbert warns that competitiveness fades and urges Hamilton to recognise that.
- Damon Hill highlights Hamilton’s evolved mindset after bruising 2025 campaign.
The three-time grand prix winner made the remark on the Stay On Track podcast. Herbert and his co-host Damon Hill were asked what single piece of advice they would offer to Lewis Hamilton.
“Probably the one thing I would probably say, if I was close to him, was be honest,” Herbert said. “Because there is a point where things aren’t going to be as easy as they once were.”
Herbert acknowledged that Hamilton, now 41, remains motivated and is pushing himself hard. But he said there comes a moment in every driver’s career when effort alone cannot bridge the gap.
“There is a point where you’re going to have to sort of go: ‘It’s not quite where it was, and I’ve got to go. I’ve had my time,'” Herbert said.
The challenge of a younger teammate
Herbert pointed to Hamilton’s situation at Ferrari. He races alongside Charles Leclerc, a younger driver widely seen as part of the next generation of Formula 1 talent.
He said that dynamic adds another layer of pressure for Hamilton to manage. Herbert placed Hamilton within a long line of champions who eventually had to accept the same reality.
He mentioned Emerson Fittipaldi, Jackie Stewart, Jim Clark, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Michael Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen, among others.
“It always gets better. They always get more complete, for some reason,” Herbert said, referring to the sport itself and the drivers who come after each generation of champions.
Herbert drew on his own career to explain the feeling. He said there was a point near the end of his time in Formula 1 when things stopped coming as naturally, and that was the moment he knew.
“When you’re sort of riding the wave, it’s quite easy in many respects. But there is a point, I remember at the end of my career, where it wasn’t as easy, and then that’s where I went, ‘I think time has come,'” he said.
Damon Hill highlights Hamilton’s evolution
Herbert’s co-host on the podcast, 1996 world champion Damon Hill, offered a different angle. Hill questioned whether Hamilton, by nature, has ever been someone who takes direction from others.
“Can you give anyone like Lewis any advice of any kind whatsoever?” Hill asked. “He’s never accepted. He’s done it his own way, he’s done it how he wants to.”
Hill noted that Hamilton appeared to be in a better place mentally this year compared to a difficult 2025 season. He suggested Hamilton may have reached a quiet acceptance about where he is in his career.
“He had such an awful time, but he’s come back with a much better frame of mind this year,” Hill said.
“It seems to me, he’s come to terms with the fact that he’s at that end of his career, and that you simply can’t keep doing the instinctive things you do when you’re 20.”
What lies ahead for Hamilton
Hamilton’s contract with Ferrari is understood to run until the end of the 2027 season. He has not confirmed whether that will be his final year in Formula 1.
He has spoken publicly about wanting to race on until the sport returns to Africa, though that project has no confirmed date.
At 41, Hamilton is the second-oldest driver currently on the grid. Very few drivers in the history of the sport have won a grand prix at that age.
Nigel Mansell was the last to do so, at the 1994 Australian Grand Prix.
Herbert’s advice carried no suggestion that Hamilton has lost his ability or his desire.
The point was narrower than that: every great champion eventually reaches a moment of reckoning, and the ones who handle it well are the ones who see it clearly when it arrives.
For Hamilton, Herbert implied, that clarity may matter as much as the speed he still clearly possesses.
