Formula One / Ralph Ellis / 13 October 2011 /

After another problematic season for the British ex-champion, is it time for him to move on from McLaren? Ralph Ellis ponders Lewis' future and picks a bet for this weekend's race.

We all know about the vote of confidence in football. When the chairman says he's 100% behind the manager that's probably because he's pushing him out of the door.

Does the same thing happen in Formula One? You just wonder if Lewis Hamilton is about to find out. Sebastian Vettel has just clinched the Drivers' title while Hamilton, the man who was supposed to be his big rival, is trailing 32 points behind his own team-mate Jenson Button and has long since run out of fingers, thumbs and toes to count the number of points he's adrift of top spot (it's now 146). Then along comes McLaren managing director Jonathan Neale with this little beauty of a quote. "I'm concerned to make sure that he (Hamilton) feels and understands that we are 100% behind him, and the workforce love everything about Lewis Hamilton."

With a year left on his contract I'd say that pretty much means it's time for Hamilton to get his coat and say, "Thanks for everything, see you around." Especially as Neale's interview in a Vodafone fans' phone-in also contained this: "The sense of the workforce is that they'd like to see more of Lewis."

Roughly translated that means that while Button has put time and effort into getting close to his team, working together to get the best of a car that they all knew was off the Red Bull pace, Hamilton has just been blaming his base for a miserable campaign and not doing enough to help sort it out.

Formula One, like any sport, moves on and evolves. There's always a new kid on the block - this weekend it is French rising star Jean-Eric Vergne who's getting a chance to drive in free practice for Torro Rosso. So maybe it was always inevitable that Hamilton would grow away from the McLaren garage. Just as 18 months ago he decided he didn't want his father to manage his affairs, so he would come to resent the influence of an organisation that has controlled his career since childhood.

The clues have been there. Hamilton was off message at the start of March. Even on a press day to show off McLaren's new road supercar, he was expressing fears that his Formula One version wouldn't be quick enough. Since then it always seems to have been somebody else's fault as a series of accidents and incidents have left him further and further off the championship pace.

Betfair's punters haven't yet lost faith in Hamilton's natural talent - he's odds on at [1.84] for a podium finish this weekend. But the value is in laying that. Everybody may be saying one thing about where the future might lie for Lewis but I suspect they are doing something different.

Lewis himself has admitted he is "not in a happy place" at the moment and that is clearly affecting his driving. Getting a vote of confidence, especially one that is "100 per cent", when his team mate has just signed a fat new contract is not going to make his place any happier.

Five things you might not know about Jean-Eric Vergne

1. Born April 1990, his parents own a go-kart track in the Parisian suburb of Pontoise where he grew up.

2. Not surprisingly he started driving from the age of four, and competing as soon as he was old enough at 11. But he never won a major junior karting championship - his best was runner-up in the ICA class European contest.

3. Single seater cars were a different story. At 17 he entered the French Formula Renault Campus series, and won it taking ten podium finishes from 13 races. That got him a place on the Red Bull Junior team.

4. He moved to Milton Keynes in January 2010, and soon discovered the "joys" of driving in England. He lists just two things he doesn't like about his new home - the M1 and M251

5. Away from the track he spends most of his time watching movies - and his favourites are the three Bourne films

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