Horner: Hamilton's 'expensive lifestyle' is behind contract delay

Red Bull boss Christian Horner has weighed in on the ongoing story of Lewis Hamilton's contract negotiations with Mercedes, and believes the current figures being rumoured in order to keep Hamilton at the Silver Arrows beyond the 2018 Formula One season are "grotesque".

The four-time world champion's current deal with Mercedes runs out at the end of the current campaign, and although he and team boss Toto Wolff has insisted that the deal is near completion, there has been no signature on the dotted line as of yet.

The new deal allegedly could be worth £120 million to Hamilton, and Horner thinks that this huge financial outlay is the reason for the delay in talks with Hamilton and Mercedes.

“I should think it’s such a grotesque amount of money that Toto is talking about, it probably is what’s making his and Niki’s [Lauda] eyes water at the moment,” Horner said at the FIA press conference on Friday.

“He [Hamilton] has an expensive lifestyle. He’s a four-time world champion and I doubt he’s cheap.

“I can only envisage that that’s probably got something to do with the delay.”

Wolff, who was sat next to Horner at the press conference, provided another update on the negotiations, and it seems that no major developments have been made recently, with the Mercedes boss refusing to give a date on when a deal would be concluded.

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“There is a bit of email ping-pong on details,” Wolff confessed.

“I don’t want to set a date because then you will be asking me why, why hasn’t it been done, but maybe we choose one of the nice grands prix in the future, in the next couple of months.”