Lewis Hamilton calls out ‘lonely’ Horner as Verstappen offers surprise response

Lewis Hamilton has denied asking Red Bull if they would be interested in signing him to partner Max Verstappen.

Christian Horner appeared to suggest that Hamilton had been interested in making the controversial switch from Mercedes.

But Hamilton has now cleared up the situation and appeared to call Horner ‘lonely’ for using his name.

He said: “Basically, I picked up my old phone that I had just found at home that had my old number on it.

“I switched it on and obviously hundreds of messages came through. And I realised there was one from Christian to get together and have a chat at the end of the season.

“Initially, I just replied on my new phone. It was after a weekend. It was quite late on I found the message. It was from earlier on in the year. It was, like, months later, and I just said ‘Congratulations on the amazing season and I hope we are able to compete with you soon’, and he replied repeating the same thing.”

Asked whether he appreciated Horner speaking about his contract situation, Hamilton continued: “Not really. If you really think about it, there are a lot of people here who really like to drop my name in conversations because they know it is going to make waves.

“And if you are a little bit lonely and are not getting much attention that is the perfect thing to do, just mention my name.”