Lewis Hamilton claims F1 chiefs have ‘failed’ to make the sport entertaining

Sir Lewis Hamilton believes the huge rule changes for the 2022 Formula 1 season have ‘failed’ to have the desired effect given how Max Verstappen has cruised to the title.

Verstappen is very likely to seal his second championship at this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix, with four races of the season still to run after that.

For 2022, F1 and the FIA introduced the biggest shake up of the regulations in years, with a much stricter budget cap aimed at bunching up the grid and new car designs that promoted overtaking.

While the racing has for the most part been an improvement over recent seasons, this campaign has been far less competitive, with only two teams, Red Bull and Ferrari, taking victories in the 17 grand prix so far.

Furthermore, on only one occasion has a driver from outside Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes finished on the podium, namely McLaren’s Lando Norris who did so at Imola back in April.

For comparison, in 2021 four teams managed to win a race, while a staggering 13 drivers across eight teams finished on the podium at least once.

At last weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, Hamilton was asked if he felt the rule changes had in any way achieved their goal of levelling the playing field.

‘Yeah, they’re supposed to do that, but it’s not achieved what it was supposed to achieve, so yeah, we failed in that,’ the Mercedes driver told Sky Sports.

‘But when you fail once you try again and fail a second time and continue to try, so I hope more changes are made to try and bring all the teams closer and create better quality throughout the racing space.

‘It’s my hope that we are all closer so we can have better racing and more overtaking. Red Bull have walked away with it this year. They have done a great job.’

A tighter budget cap and