Profile: Lewis Hamilton

(Rex Features)

Is he getting back together with Nicole?

Alas, there have been plenty of rumours but no official confirmation, though it would appear that spending four years with the former Pussycat Doll has had a strange effect on the Formula One driver. Apparently not content with simply being known as a sportsman, he's reported to have rented a recording studio in west London to lay down some tracks.

Credibility: gone

In what will surely come as a relief to his corporate sponsors, he won't be releasing any of his material for public dissection, and he's rented the whole studio to make sure no one gets within earshot. Perhaps it simply represents a pleasant diversion for the multi-millionaire – a way to forget a horrible season which saw him outperformed byhis McLaren team-mate Jenson Button, fully supplanted as the sport's Bright Young Thing by Sebastian Vettel and involved in an only mildly entertaining feud with Felipe Massa.

What kind of music is it?

It is said the songs have an R&B flavour, and that "he's had good feedback". But it takes more than a leap of faith to imagine the softly spoken Hamilton as the newR Kelly or Bobby Brown.

Back to the day job, then.

Other Formula One drivers have managed to combine the two careers. Sakon Yamamoto and Jaime Alguersuari do DJ work, and Adrian Sutil used to be a piano prodigy. But none of these created a musical legacy comparable to that of 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve. In 2006, he released "Accepterais-tu?" (Will You Marry Me?). The video, which sees him strum a guitar on top of a grassy hill, resembles a Saturday Night Live skit until, horrifyingly, it dawns that it's real.