Hamilton critical of F1 governance and future path

Lewis Hamilton believes that there are just too many parties involved in the decision making of F1, and too few who truly understand how a car works.

The reigning world champion was critical last weekend in Melbourne of the sport's new qualifying format and the process by which it was voted, insisting that F1's current decision process is having a negative impact.

"I feel at the top end there are probably way too many people making decisions, who probably don't have a lot of understanding of what it's like in the car," Hamilton said.

"All the people making the decisions have different opinions, and if they don't all agree then something doesn't get done.

"My understanding is there are teams with more money, more say than others, and the problem is for us drivers, half of us will say one thing and half will say another.

"I don't know what the answer is, but there needs to be less people making the decisions, and hopefully making the right ones."

The Mercedes driver also pinpointed his community's lack of interaction with F1's leaders, believing that drivers' views are simply not taken into account, a claim FIA's Charlie Whiting strongly denies, pointing the finger at Hamilton for his lack of presence at drivers' meetings.

"I don't know if the drivers need to be more involved in certain things," Hamilton said.

"It is interesting that recently Charlie has hit out at me and it is right that he has called some meetings, but I didn't go as at the time I was really just focused on doing my work with my engineers.

"But also it is very rare that anything in our conversations gets taken notice of, so there is no need for me to be there.

"Most likely if I do go, Sebastian is the only one who is going to be doing the talking so there is no point in me being there, I can just read about it later."

With regard to F1's future complexion of making cars five seconds faster in 2017, Hamilton isn't sure the changes will have a positive bearing on the racing.

"I was looking at an old picture of a start at Estoril and the two Williams were ahead then the two McLarens and they were wide cars, wheels looked great, the rear wheels should always be way bigger than the front wheels.

"We need more mechanical grip and less wake coming off the car in front. At the moment you see us just sliding around as we don't have much grip as it is on these tyres and then as soon as we get in the wake there is just nothing we can do.

Australian Grand Prix - Quotes of the weekend

Australian Grand Prix - Driver ratings

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