Lewis Hamilton’s 2024 F1 title aspirations have been brutally dismissed by Eddie Jordan. The former team owner has declared he ‘no longer trusts’ the seven-time world champion to be able to sustain a challenge amid the dominance of Max Verstappen last season.
The Red Bull driver finished a mammoth 290 points clear of teammate Sergio Perez in the drivers’ standings, with Hamilton a further 51 points back in third place. It meant a third successive world crown for the Dutchman, with the current gap between his team and Mercedes leaving the Silver Arrows with a mountain to climb in order to restore parity this year.
And ex-pundit Jordan, 75, believes there is only one driver on the grid who can potentially threaten Verstappen’s current dominance. And it isn’t the iconic Brit, who this year signed a two-year contract extension that runs to the end of the 2025 campaign.
“This is Charles Leclerc,” he told Sport1. “Ferrari has to succeed in building a car this year that is on par with the Red Bull. Otherwise, I’m not sure what the excitement will be like.
Lewis Hamilton’s 2024 F1 title aspirations have been brutally dismissed by Eddie Jordan. The former team owner has declared he ‘no longer trusts’ the seven-time world champion to be able to sustain a challenge amid the dominance of Max Verstappen last season.
“If I had a top team now and didn’t get Max, there would only be one driver pairing that would be able to take on the fight with Verstappen: Charles Leclerc and, as a teammate, Lando Norris. Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, well-deserved champions indeed, I simply no longer trust that they can keep up with Verstappen because of their advanced age.”
Jordan’s comments will raise eyebrows, not least of all because an improved Hamilton finished clear of both drivers in 2023. Leclerc finished fifth, also behind Alonso, and failed to register a single Grand Prix win.
McLaren man Norris meanwhile, was one point – and one place – behind the Monegasque man. Hamilton’s compatriot is still waiting for his first F1 victory after 104 starts, and has been touted to replace the all-time great at Mercedes when their respective contract deals expire at the end of next year.
By that point, Hamilton will be just shy of his 41st birthday, but his desire to win an unprecedented eighth world title has been widely perceived as motivation for him to continue in the sport. He was infamously denied that honour at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in 2021, when Verstappen prevailed in very controversial circumstances.
His current tally levels that of the great Michael Schumacher, who Jordan handed his debut drive in F1. And the Irishman believes that Verstappen possesses similar qualities to the German legend.
“For me, Max Verstappen is the mixture of Senna and Schumacher,” he said. “It was already clear to Michael after the first test drives at Silverstone: he would be Ayrton Senna’s challenger. He was so fast straight away that we thought the stopwatch was crazy.”
