2014 F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton close to signing bumper Mercedes deal

Reigning F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton expects to sign his new contract with Mercedes sometime this week.

The British driver joined Mercedes from McLaren in 2012 and then signed a three-year-contract, which will come to an end at the end of the current campaign.

Negotiations over a new deal had begun midway through last season, but were then shelved until the end of the season, to help the driver concentrate on his driving as Hamilton was battling for the 2014 world title with teammate Nico Rosberg.

With Hamilton splitting from his management team to negotiate his own contract, it has been a prolonged saga, which is finally reaching its conclusion after the driver revealed that all negotiations are now over before confirming that the deal will be signed this week.

"It should be done this week. There is no reason it shouldn't. Honestly, it's 99.6% done. There's no negotiating left, it's just legal stuff," Hamilton said, as quoted by the BBC.

Mercedes chief Toto Wolff had even revealed that they were looking at replacements, and had identified McLaren driver Fernando Alonso as an alternative if the two-time world champion failed to sign a new deal with the team.

The report claims that Hamilton's salary could be more than £27m-a-year taking him on par with the other big earners in the sport mainly Sebastian Vettel and Alonso.

Meanwhile, the British driver, who won the first race of the 2015 season in Australia and then finished second behind a resurgent Vettel and Ferrari in Malaysia believes that Mercedes can recover from the shock of losing to the Maranello based team and come back stronger in the next race at the Shanghai International Circuit.

"It has given us a pinch to suggest, 'Oh, OK, we've got a race on our hands'. We're a racing team, and we will be quicker in the next race. We'll manage; we'll be absolutely fine," the 2014 World Champion added.

"Ferrari are too close to us in the championship, so we'll work very hard to analyse what we learned and apply it so it doesn't happen again at the next race."