Lewis Hamilton 'driven to despair' by politics

“I just feel knocked about by it all. I want to be a driver – I am not in the sport to be a politician.

“It hasn’t affected my driving. I won’t allow anything to affect my driving. But it affects your life, it affects the way you are. I used to enjoy Formula One and part of that has been taken away from me.

“I never imagined there would be so much politics when I came into Formula One. It definitely was a shock. There has been too much time taken up with it. Unfortunately, it is the way the Formula One world works for some reason. It’s much nicer in the lower categories, where all the people are there just to race and the teams are there just to race.”

As if to underline Hamilton’s point, Formula One’s ten teams meet this morning at a Heathrow hotel to thrash out the future of the sport in the latest political upheaval.

Five teams – Ferrari, Renault, Red Bull, Toyota and Toro Rosso – are threatening to quit the sport over plans to impose a budget cap of £40 million a year per team. Ferrari are leading the rebellion, but Bernie Ecclestone, the sport’s commercial rights-holder, is desperate to broker a peace deal to prevent the most famous name in Formula One from walking away from the paddock.

On one side, the rebels want the freedom to spend whatever they want; on the other is Max Mosley, the president of the FIA, the governing body, who is determined to attack the effects of the recession.

The prize for Mosley is the introduction of new teams wanting to compete within stringent cost limits. David Richards, chairman of Aston Martin, the famous English sports car company, has declared he would enter a team under the budget cap, while an American team, USGP, will be ready to run in 2010. Lola, another British racing car company, will also bid for a place and Mike Gascoyne, the former technical director at Toyota and Force India, said yesterday he is on the brink of forming a new British-based team.

Without agreement today, Formula One will go to its showpiece event, the Monaco Grand Prix, next week under the long shadow of infighting – the sort of frustrating turmoil that the Formula One world champion is still trying to come to terms with.

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