“Ferrari chaos not attractive to Hamilton; he’s talking himself into staying”

The saga over Hamilton’s new contract with Mercedes rumbles on because it remains unsigned even though the driver and his team have always been adamant that it is a formality.

Hamilton was linked with a £40m-per-season deal with Ferrari, but the Italian manufacturer’s former general manager has shot down those claims.

“I can’t imagine Ferrari is attractive to him,” Windsor said. 

“Obviously he did work with Fred Vasseur at ASM in his Formula Three days, and knows him. Fred would have put out the feelers to him.

“But then, if he doesn’t go to Ferrari and all the chaos, where is he going to go? 

“He’s not going to get a Red Bull seat. So he might as well stay where he is.

“I think Lewis is, sort of, talking himself into staying at Mercedes, isn’t he?

“You could argue that [after the F1 British Grand Prix], he will get on the plane back and he’ll be thinking look at McLaren, they’ve turned it around, we can do the same.’

“I’m sure there’s a lot of that going on at Mercedes. 

“I think Lewis, with these conversations with Toto Wolff afterwards, was saying ‘McLaren is unbelievably good on fast corners, that’s what we’ve got to do.’

“But it’s one thing to say ‘we want to be really quick on fast corners’, it’s another to be quick on fast corners! That’s a different story.”

Hamilton is seeking the all-time record eighth F1 championship but is now battling against the dominance of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who is on course for his third in a row.

They meet again this weekend at the F1 Hungarian Grand Prix.