Formula 1 veteran Martin Brundle has painted a gloomy picture around Lewis Hamilton heading into the 2021 season.
The Briton has had a more eventful winter than usual, as he and Mercedes negotiated what would eventually only be a one-year extension to the contract which expired at the end of last year.
And while Hamilton has since said he’s happy to keep his options open beyond this year, the former driver turned commentator thinks behind the scenes things could be different.
“We did a couple of features with him that we will play out through the year on Sky Sports F1,” Brundle revealed to the broadcaster ahead of testing later this week.
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“He was very generous but a bit grumpy actually, I thought generally. It’s interesting that his right-hand man, Marc Hynes, is no longer working with him.
“I sensed he possibly wasn’t super-happy with the way the negotiations have worked out at Mercedes.”
The story heading into this season is whether, after another dominant year in 2020, anyone can stop Hamilton from becoming the first eight-time F1 champion and surpass Michael Schumacher.
Also, the 36-year-old is on the cusp of reaching a century of both wins and pole positions, both Brundle again revealed Lewis appeared downbeat, although perhaps playfully.
“Once we got over that, I did say to him ‘you’re going to burst through 100 poles this year at some point, most likely’ and he went ‘why?’,” he said.
“‘McLaren were a quarter of a second behind us in Abu Dhabi, now they’ve got our engine; what about Red Bull, maybe the high rake works; and don’t count out Ferrari, and the Aston Martin will be strong’.
“He sort of really challenged me quite hard and I said ‘well, you have got 98 of them, mostly in the hybrid era, you scored 10 last year – there’s half a chance you’ll get two more this year’.
“But Lewis does love to poke you a little bit before you sit down to do stuff like that, and after that, I had an hour with him talking about that amazing race in Istanbul last year when he took his seventh world title and he was very generous on inside his head, inside his life of a Grand Prix weekend and how qualifying unfolds.”