David Coulthard – the oldest driver in the
Formula 1 field – has dispensed some words of advice to
Lewis Hamilton on the eve of the pair's home grand prix at
Silverstone this coming weekend, warning his fellow Brit against going down ‘a Beckham-style route'.
Hamilton has been widely criticised in the media in 2008 for paying too much attention to his off-track activities, consequently allowing his eye to be removed from the ball on race weekends and hurting his world championship challenge.
The detractors will highlight a distinctly scrappy performance in Bahrain early on in the season, and a brace of calamitous outings in Montreal and Magny-Cours earlier this month, with a series of expensive errors – none more so than running into the back of chief title rival
Kimi Raikkonen in the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve's pit-lane – not only costing the young Stevenage ace his advantage in the drivers' standings, but indeed seeing him slip a full ten points adrift of the top spot, now held by Raikkonen's
Ferrari team-mate
Felipe Massa.
In evidence of their argument, Hamilton's critics will point to the 23-year-old's budding relationship with Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger, a disastrous PR stunt in Turkey that saw him – still geared up in his full
F1 driving suit – swung from a trapeze wire in the role of the god Apollo on the set of a local theatre show, and ‘A-list' encounters of the like that saw him take to the stage during Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday celebrations in London's Hyde Park last Friday.
