Forgive the gross presumption in offering career advice to Lewis Hamilton, but he has given his father’s management the flick and told Simon Fuller’s XIX Entertainment their services are no longer needed. He, a novice in such entanglements, is now negotiating his own future, albeit with the help of a lady lawyer of impeccable and long-standing loyalty to the family. We are told by Mercedes that a new contract to replace the one that expires at the end of the season is a formality. Hamilton has said he wants to sign it. Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton celebrates his win at the season-opening race in Melbourne, Australia  - but is yet to sign a new deal with the team . Hamilton's current Mercedes contract runs out at the end of this season and no new deal has been agreed yet . Yet four months after he won the world championship in Abu Dhabi, there is only one important fact: no deal has been concluded. This is strange. It is literally only an afternoon’s job sorting out the terms of a contract if there is a willingness on both sides to tie it all up. So why the delay? It may be that Hamilton is holding out for the salary he wants. It is not £1million a week he seeks, despite some reports to the contrary. It is probably about €1m – or the piffling matter of £720,000 according to the current exchange rate. Perhaps the two sides will yet come to a mutually agreeable financial arrangement. But, as one of my mentors advised me about the chicanery of the paddock, there is a reason behind everything in Formula One. Mercedes say a new contract is a formality while Hamilton says he wants ti sign, so why the delay? Hamilton celebrates his Australian GP win in front of second-placed Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel . I hope that the delay is because Hamilton is seeking a move to Ferrari. Madness? No. By the end of the season, he hopes to have emulated his hero Ayrton Senna in winning three world titles – the number that most clearly defines a driver’s status in the pantheon. What has he got to lose? Such is Senna’s immortal fame that here in Australia, from where I write this, Senna’s face is still emblazoned on billboards advertising Tag Heuer watches. Never mind that he died in 1994. Before his fatal accident at the San Marino Grand Prix, Senna, as has since become common knowledge, talked to Ferrari about racing for them. I suspect scratching the itch that Senna could not - namely, competing for the sport’s most evocative marque - would mean more to Hamilton than the possibility of clocking up win after win, title after title. He has never been a chaser of records for their own sake. That kind of thing is for Vettel and the birds. Vettel joined Ferrari ahead of the new season after six seasons driving for Red Bull . The German finished third in his first race for the Scuderia in Melbourne eight days ago . However, there is no reason why Ferrari, with their vast resources, could not deliver title-winning cars for him. Then, he would have won championships with three teams, McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari. His status would be further embellished. Another tantalising, legend-making prospect is a straight fight in identical machinery between Hamilton and Vettel. Hamilton, like Fernando Alonso, thinks himself a better racer than Vettel, who, so the theory goes, was flattered by his Red Bull car in winning four world titles. By replacing Kimi Raikkonen, whose contract runs out at the end of the season, Hamilton could prove what he has always believed. I can hear the chorus of the cautious. Mercedes are a super-team; Ferrari are in upheaval and struggling for form. Yes, but success in sport is often cyclical. Ferrari are fabulously well-resourced. And who knows whether the team that Ross Brawn built at Mercedes will thrive so dominantly in the long run? Will Toto Wolff and Paddy Lowe work harmoniously if the wheels fall off? How will Niki Lauda’s scattergun style of chairmanship play out? If Hamilton wants to be bold and take the plunge, he has a big ally at Ferrari. I hear from unimpeachable sources that the Scuderia’s president, Sergio Marchionne, rates Hamilton top of the drivers available to him. Vettel won four consecutive world championships as Red Bull dominated Formula One . It seems journalism is not a crime, Max Mosley . I hope it won’t spoil our next very agreeable lunch if I point out to Max Mosley that it has emerged from the Old Bailey that journalism is not a criminal offence, after all. For, in a blow to the former FIA president's censorship-seeking pressure group Hacked Off, four Sun journalists were cleared last week of paying public officials for stories in a case that delved far into the ethics of the tabloid Press. My trade's hero of the court is Mr Justice Saunders for his reaction to the prosecution’s haughty counsel, Mr Michael Parroy QC, who implied that the Sun’s chief reporter, John Kay, was wrong to describe the death in Afghanistan of Prince William’s Army mentor as ‘a belting exclusive splash’. The judge said: ‘The mere fact of it being a tragedy does not stop it being a good story.’ Jules Bianchi suffered a horrific crash at the Japanese Grand Prix in October last year . This reminded me of a furore after Jules Bianchi’s awful accident in Suzuka last year. Several bloggers – some of whom, we note, have never remotely held down a staff job at a blue chip media organisation – fulminated piously on their websites about the supposed insensitivity of at least one of my Fleet Street colleagues in seeking facts and answers from Bianchi’s Marussia team and the FIA in those worrying hours immediately after the crash. The critics did not understand that when a sports event immediately becomes a news inferno, the reporter must adapt. It was not insensitivity that led journalists to ask detailed questions of those whose job it was to answer them; it was a professional requirement. I shall stop being sanctimonious myself, now. But if anyone doubts the sense of what I say, I cite Mr Justice Saunders. Former FIA president Max Mosley arrives the High Court in London for the Leveson Inquiry . It's a shame to lose the German Grand Prix . It is bad enough being a Pommie visitor Down Under when the Australian team are blazing their way towards cricket's World Cup final and the boys who briefly masqueraded as the England team are already back and badly bruised in Blighty. But it is not only born and bred Aussies to be dodged. There was also the Pakistani-supporting taxi driver in Melbourne, who dissected England’s failings, brought me up to date with Imran Khan’s latest political plans and was about to fly next morning to Adelaide to watch his Pakistan team lose, as it predictably turned out, to Australia. Then you go to Sydney and are driven back from Watsons Bay by a Bangladeshi taxi driver. He hoots with laughter at how his heroes gave our lot a national disgrace of a caning. England were dumped out of the World Cup after a defeat by Bangladesh earlier this month . But it was still a rare thrill to go to the giant bowl of the MCG to watch one of the 49 days of cricket in this absurdly protracted competition. Sitting in the members’ area, we could visit the library, sip refreshments in reasonable comfort and gawp at the galleries of pictures of heroes like Douglas Jardine, who, as captain of the 1932-33 ‘Bodyline’ team, led the most notorious touring party to these shores since the First Fleet. A few hours after returning from the MCG it was announced that the German Grand Prix was off. Like most Formula One devotees, I was sorry. This is a heritage race. But could either German venue, the Nurburgring or Hockenheim, claim that they offered a world-class experience for punters or the travelling Formula One family? Hamilton drives his Mercedes to third in last season's German Grand Prix at Hockenheim . F1 is missing the voice of Murray Walker . Australian television sport is said to be a tough and jealous business. Especially so if you sound as English as Eddie Redmayne. But a few of our chaps have really cracked it: Henry Blofeld and Mark Nicholas, both from cricket, and, spectacularly, Murray Walker. Murray’s friend and successor, James Allen, told me once that by his reckoning only Sir Jack Brabham and, possibly, Alan Jones stood higher in the esteem of Australian motor-racing than our own high-decibel warbler. Reflecting on the dissatisfied response to the first race of the season in Melbourne, I wondered how different perceptions among TV viewers would have been if Murray had been behind the microphone rather than watching, headphones on, from the study of his Hampshire home. The famous F1 commentator Murray Walker had the ability doubled the excitement levels just by being there . For all the blanket coverage provided by Sky’s pioneering crack team, and the BBC’s excellent professional output, there is no longer that one voice which doubles the excitement levels just by being there. Transcendent commentators come along in any sport once in a generation, if we are lucky. David Coleman was one such golden larynx in athletics, a sport that has lost a little of its allure since he left it. Murray Walker, on two continents, was another.
Lewis Hamilton's current Mercedes deal expires at the end of this season . Mercedes say a new contract for the world champion is a formality . Hamilton says he wants to extend his stay, so why the delay? Hopefully the 30-year-old is holding out for a move to Ferrari . Hamilton could finally prove that he is a better driver than Sebastian Vettel . CLICK HERE for all the latest news from the world of Formula One .