Lewis Hamilton’s post-championship revellry and worldwide wanderings in celebration of his crowning glory have taken him just about everywhere except into the Mercedes HQ to agree another contract.

If that is a worrying concern for the team leader, Toto Wolff — as urbane as they come — he is not showing it, at least not in public.

Hamilton’s second world title, earned with 11 victories in a spectacular take-over of the championship by Mercedes, has been hailed as one of the truly great triumphs and the likelihood of it being repeated this season is odds-on.

But the prospect has not spurred the 30-year-old Londoner to any urgent action in the area of contract negotiations, even though his ongoing worth must be increased with a refreshed deal from the £20m (Dh111.45m) a year he is said to be raking in from the German legends on the contract.

Up front there appears to be no panic on either side, but I suspect Mercedes’ anxiety to retain the champion’s talents, allied to his massive sponsorship potential, are an undercurrent of feverish activity.

And their efforts to nudge him towards the dotted line this week took what appears to me to be a reminder, as much as a safety-first manoeuvre, to him that the team will not fall apart if he fails to scrawl his now-famous signature on their proposed deal.

Astutely, Wolff dropped the broadest of hints that a Mercedes team rejected by Hamilton could, and more than probably would, switch their attention to either Williams sensation Valtteri Bottas or double-champion Fernando Alonso, who has exited Ferrari for McLaren.

I have it on the best of authorities that Spaniard Alonso, 33, has an escape clause written into his McLaren-Honda deal that would allow him to join Mercedes at the season’s shut-down.

Finland’s Bottas, much as Williams are desperate to hang onto the 26-year-old, has emerged as a target for all the top teams and Mercedes, naturally, as front-runners and likely to be so for a few more seasons, appeal to a driver of his distinction.

Wolff would not publicly confess to an interest in either of the two heavily fancied drivers, or any other for that matter.

And he limited himself to an intruiging: “I cannot comment on the rumours except to say that it is always good to be prepared for an eventualities. Alternatives are important, but they are alternatives and not priorities.”

He added: “Lewis and we have not yet agreed because we have not sat down together. At the end of last season we did not want to disrupt Lewis’s focus on winning the championship. But now he is back from his vacation we will sit together in the very near future.

“For us, Lewis and Nico Rosberg are the best and strongest driver combination on the grid and we have no reason to change anything. Lewis feels good in the team and we with him. That speaks for a common future.”

I’ll say it for Herr Wolff — over to you Lewis.

— The writer is a freelance journalist and motorsport expert