Lewis Hamilton should have 'retired after Abu Dhabi 2021' claims ex-McLaren chief

Lewis Hamilton's decision to not retire from F1 after his crushing defeat at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix has been analysed by a former McLaren chief.

Matt Bishop worked as McLaren's communications director from 2008 until 2017, joining the year Hamilton won his first F1 drivers' title.

The 63-year-old has often praised Hamilton's career, both on and off the track; but looking ahead to the 2026 season and writing for the champion's 41st birthday, Bishop admitted wishing Hamilton retired after Abu Dhabi 2021 in a column for Motor Sport Magazine.

Hamilton lost his eighth world title on the final lap of the race, after a late safety car allowed Max Verstappen to pit for fresh tyres and overtake for his first world title.

While Bishop was impressed by Hamilton's reaction to losing the title, he also expressed his wish that the Brit should have retired there and then.

"Yet sometimes, because of what has happened since — because, in other words, he so rarely had a fully competitive car in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 — I find myself wishing that when he had emerged from that self-imposed purdah, which in my imagined version of events he should have done on January 7, 2022, his 37th birthday, he had chosen a different path," Bishop wrote.

"I wish, selfishly perhaps, that he had emulated one of his best ever team-mates, Nico Rosberg, who quit at the apex of his career after winning the 2016 F1 drivers’ world championship, having achieved his ultimate goal and knowing that the cost of staying might outweigh the rewards.

"For Lewis, the apex would have been Abu Dhabi 2021. Not because he won the F1 drivers’ world championship there — on the contrary, we all know that he was robbed of it there — but because he had earned it there, on track, on merit, in performance, and in spirit."

Should Hamilton have retired after Abu Dhabi 2021?

It's easy to say with hindsight that Hamilton should have retired, particularly after a disastrous first season with Ferrari, but, if he has an equally difficult 2026, the seven-time world champion is further at risk of endangering his legacy.

Bishop continued: "Had he done that [retired], his F1 story would have been neat — devastatingly so. He would have left with his dignity intact, his legacy unassailable, and his eighth F1 drivers’ world championship morally, if not officially, secured.

"History — and, crucially, the F1 powers-that-be — would have been forced to reckon with the injustice rather than move on from it. And Lewis, freed from the F1 treadmill, could have turned his formidable intelligence, influence, and energy to the many causes that clearly matter to him."

Bishop did preface his piece by expressing his hope that Hamilton could return to his winning ways, and wrote: "I dearly hope that the 2026 Ferrari will be a car worthy of his talent, ambition, and legacy. I would love nothing better than to watch him win races in rosso corsa, and to see him add to his already unparalleled magnum opus with a late-career flourish that would have Enzo Ferrari grinning from ear to ear in whatever celestial paddock he now inhabits.

"But hope, in F1, is a fragile currency, and realism demands that we acknowledge the doubts and worries about Hamilton that pervade the paddocks, the pitlanes, the press rooms, and the grandstands. In a nutshell, it is possible that he may not be quite as scintillatingly quick as he once was."

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