Hamilton could be £100m driver
It is understood that the Woking-based team want to tie him up until he is 33 - for what, in effect, could be the rest of his driving career. That would mean that Hamilton, who went within a point of winning the world championship in his brilliant rookie season of 2007 and took the title the following year, would be a one-team man. He has already spent more than half his life with McLaren, signed by the former team principal Ron Dennis as a boy prodigy when he was only 13.
The best-paid driver in Formula One is believed to be Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, on €30m (£24m) a year. But, at almost 31, the Spaniard is four years older than Hamilton, his great rival at McLaren in 2007, and the younger man could jump ahead on the back of bonuses and off-track earnings, Kazinform cites the Guardian.
A basic salary of £20m a year would make Hamilton the most highly paid British sportsman in the world before endorsements are factored in.
No formal talks have taken place yet between McLaren, Hamilton and the driver's agents, XIX Entertainment, fronted by Simon Fuller. But it is believed that McLaren, who have never made any secret of the fact they want to retain the services of the sport's biggest box office attraction, are ready to make their move.
When they do so it will end speculation that Hamilton could be set for a move to Mercedes, where he is greatly admired and where Michael Schumacher, at 43, is coming to the end of a rather protracted and recently disappointing career.
Ferrari, who are ready to dispense with the services of the underperforming Felipe Massa at the end of the season - or perhaps before - have also been strongly linked with Hamilton. But Red Bull, who have dominated the sport for the past two seasons and to where a frustrated Hamilton infamously turned in Canada last year to sound out the prospects of alternative employment, are thought not to be interested in signing the gifted but volatile driver.
Hamilton, as even McLaren would ruefully confirm, can be a handful. Last year, when Jenson Button became his first McLaren team-mate to outperform him over a season, Hamilton was distracted by personal issues. He was constantly crashing into other drivers on the track and arguing with stewards off it. And it all started to go wrong for him here, in Monaco, his new home from earlier this year.
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