MONACO — Double Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton has agreed a new three-year contract that will keep him at Mercedes until the end of 2018, the team announced Wednesday. Although no financial details were given, media reports have suggested the Briton is in line for a bumper pay packet amounting to more than $40 million a year. “Mercedes is my home and I couldn't be happier to be staying here for another three years,” the 30-year-old Briton said in a statement that ended any talk of a move to rivals Ferrari in the near future. Hamilton, who has a 20-point lead over team mate Nico Rosberg in the current championship after five races, is already one of the highest earners in the sport along with Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel and McLaren's Fernando Alonso. German driver Rosberg, who is chasing a third successive Monaco Grand Prix win this weekend, agreed his own multi-year contract extension last July. Hamilton's new deal ends months of uncertainty about the driver's future, with speculation swirling since the middle of last year and increasing despite repeated assurances that all was on track. The champion has dispensed with the services of a manager and has been conducting much of the negotiations, and reading through contracts, himself. The Briton, who won his first title with McLaren in 2008, has been backed by Mercedes since his teenage years and all of his 36 Grand Prix wins have been with the German manufacturer's engines. Fifteen of those victories, including 11 last year, have been for the Mercedes works team. “Mercedes-Benz began supporting me in 1998 so I am very proud that this contract means I will mark 20 years with Mercedes in 2018,” he said. Mercedes motorsport head Toto Wolff said continuity was a key factor in delivering success. Rosberg seeks Monaco hat trick Nico Rosberg will seek to follow his championship-boosting triumph earlier this month by completing a rare hat trick of successive Monaco Grand Prix wins on his hometown streets this weekend. The 29-year-old German ended a spell in the shadow of his Mercedes teammate and two-time world champion Lewis Hamilton with his victory ahead of him at the Spanish Grand Prix, cutting the Briton's lead from 27 points to 20. A repeat in Sunday's classic race around the unforgiving narrow roads of the Mediterranean principality will confirm his return to form and add his name to a revered list of Monte Carlo victors. Not since three-time world champion and six-time Monaco winner Brazilian Ayrton Senna won five in a row from 1989-93, has any driver won three in a row at Monaco. Frenchman Alain Prost, a four-time champion, won three successive races from 1984 to 1986, and again in 1988, a feat that endorsed the era of his rivalry with Senna as one of the greatest. Before them, only Briton Graham Hill managed the feat, winning thrice from 1963 to 1965. The great German seven-time champion Michael Schumacher won the race five times in all, but never three times in a row. All of which leaves Rosberg on the cusp of a potentially famous achievement as he attempts to rein in Hamilton, who has won three of this year's five opening races. — Agencies
