LINDSEY VONN INSISTS 'JUST FRIENDS WITH LEWIS HAMILTON ... Uh Huh, Sure.

LINDSEY VONN who spent her birthday weekend traveling to Austin to see Lewis Hamilton race -- is once again insisting the two are just "friends."

Okay.

The two got close, once again, at the F1 Circuit of the Americas ... a race Lewis dominated from start to finish. 

Remember, she spent her birthday on a bowling date with the guy last week ... and last year, she visited the guy at the British Grand Prix.

Plus, just look at the picture they took together over the weekend -- that look like just friends to you? 

The catch, however, is that Lewis went on "Ellen" last week and insisted he's very single and VERY focused on his racing this year ... and won't let a relationship get in his way. 

That's great and all -- but dude, click the gallery below. Might wanna reconsider your policy.

Lewis Hamilton: Mercedes driver could take grid penalty at the Belgian Grand Prix

Mercedes say Lewis Hamilton is "likely" to suffer a grid penalty for using too many engine parts at this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix.

The team say they will know for certain on Thursday, but a decision to take the extra engine parts Hamilton needs would mean a drop of at least 20 grid places.

A series of failures early in the season meant that Hamilton used up more engine components than planned.

He heads into the race 19 championship points ahead of team-mate Nico Rosberg.

Six wins in the past seven races for Hamilton have turned around what had been a 43-point advantage for the German after the first four races of the season.

A spokesman said the team were still working through the requirements and consequences related to any decision to take the penalty in Belgium.

The other option is to wait until the Italian Grand Prix the following weekend.

What did Hamilton do?

Drivers are allowed to use a maximum of five of each of the six parts of an engine before a grid penalty is incurred.

Hamilton has already used the maximum permitted five items of two elements of the complicated turbo hybrid engine - the turbocharger and the MGU-H, the electric motor that recovers energy from the turbo.

Teams are given a 10-place grid penalty each time they use a sixth example of any component, so using one new of each of these means a 20-place grid penalty for Hamilton.

There are only 22 cars on the grid and a driver can only go to the back no matter how many theoretical grid penalties he suffers for using additional engine components.

So Mercedes may choose to take two new examples of each of these parts to bring them into line with the number of the other parts of the engine he has used.

Hamilton has so far used three each of the internal combustion engine, MGU-K, energy store and control electronics.

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Lewis Hamilton may start Belgian GP from the back of the grid

Mercedes may opt to start Lewis Hamilton from the back of the grid for the Belgian GP in August.

Mercedes may opt to start Lewis Hamilton from the back of the grid for the Belgian GP in August.

The speculation comes from Germany’s Auto, Motor und Sport, which expects that Hamilton will use his sixth and seventh engines at Spa.

Hamilton ran into an abundance of engine problems at the start of the season, and has came to accept the fact that he will not be able to finish the season using just five engines.

The problem is that for each engine that is used after the fifth, that driver incurs a 10-place grid penalty.

This obviously does not help Hamilton, as he is battling his Mercedes F1 teammate Nico Rosberg for the championship title and needs to start as close to the front as possible for each race.

But instead of having two or three races in which he is sent back 10-spots on the grid, why not just take one giant penalty for one race and get two new engines for the rest of the season, reasons Mercedes. The Belgian GP usually sees rain and Safety Car periods that mix up strategy anyway, and the track features plenty of overtaking opportunities.

Currently, Hamilton sits just one point back of Rosberg with two rounds between them and the Belgian GP. The F1 field will be in action in Hungary on July 24 and then again one week later in Germany on July 31.

Lewis Hamilton grabs pole for the Canadian Grand Prix as Daniel Ricciardo settles for fourth

LEWIS Hamilton swept to his fifth Canadian Grand Prix pole position and piled more pressure on his championship-leading Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg.

Daniel Ricciardo, who was famously denied victory at the last race in Monte Carlo after a botched pit stop, will start the race from fourth spot on the grid but his qualification was not without more drama.

Hamilton, the triple Formula One world champion, will seek to win in Montreal for the fifth time, knowing he will retake the title lead if Rosberg draws a blank.

Lewis Hamilton is chasing his fifth win in Canada.

HHis love affair with the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, where he took his first pole in 2007, continued as he seized the top slot with a time of one minute 12.812 seconds and beat Rosberg by 0.062.

Two weeks after lucking into his first win of the season in Monaco, Hamilton provided further evidence that his campaign is fully back on track after a start plagued by misfortune.

Rosberg’s second place brought him a 13th consecutive front row start, with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel third fastest and 0.178 behind Hamilton.

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Eighteen-year-old Max Verstappen is fifth and Kimi Raikkonen sixth for Ferrari.

Ricciardo said he was worrying about losing his wheels when he gave the ‘wall of champions’ a “pretty big kiss”.

The 26-year-old said he felt his Red Bull touching the wall as he exited the final chicane and recalled the similar incident that resulted in a crash and elimination for Spaniard Carlos Sainz.

Ricciardo clipped the wall with both his front and rear wheels, just as Sainz had in his Toro Rosso, but he survived without serious damage.

“It felt like a pretty big kiss actually!” said Ricciardo.

“As soon as I hit it, I thought about what happened to Carlos in my head.

“I thought ‘just please keep the wheels on until the line and then they can fall off it they want’. In the end, I don’t think I lost that much to it.

“I think I carried so much speed into the corner that I gained in what I lost out by hitting the wall. It probably didn’t change the overall position.

Daniel Ricciardo emerged unscathed after an altercation with a wall.

“I took a pretty big hit yesterday, as well (in practice), and the car held up. We’ll see. It felt a bit buckled.

“The car wobbled a bit as I crossed the line. I’m sure the FIA will let us change parts if we need to if they look a bit worse for wear.”

After his glum exit from Monte Carlo after finishing a frustrated second in last month’s Monaco Grand Prix, Ricciardo was smiling again.

“Yeh, I’m pretty happy. This weekend has been steady and I think we’ve built it up,” he said.

“We got it all together and we’re pretty happy with fourth. We’re only three tenths from pole...”

As to his prospects of winning, he smiled. And said: “We’ve got an outside chance.”

Mercedes deny favouring Nico Rosberg over Lewis Hamilton

Mercedes have rejected accusations that they are favouring Nico Rosberg over Lewis Hamilton this season.

In an open letter to fans posted on their website, the team address "the haters, the naysayers and the conspirators" following criticism on social media.

Mercedes also say it was a "miracle" Hamilton's car finished Sunday's Russian Grand Prix as the engine had zero water pressure for the last 16 laps.

They admit they have "not met our own expectations on reliability" in 2016.

The letter comes in the wake of four troubled races for Hamilton at the start of this season that have left him trailing Rosberg in the championship by 43 points - the equivalent of win and a second place.

And the problems have left the world champion exposed to the likelihood of further difficulties later in the season.

The engine problems suffered by Hamilton mean he is likely to have to take grid penalties for using more than the permitted number of parts at some stage.

But the letter amounts to an impassioned plea to fans who have accused the team of trying to engineer a championship for Rosberg to reconsider.

"Performance-wise we are right on the money," the letter says, "but there is work to be done. Our goal is not simply to be fast but bulletproof, too. Not just to manage the problems but to understand them, fix them and ensure they are not repeated.

"We are working tirelessly to do just that and will continue to do so every step of the way.

"But there are no guarantees. This is a mechanical sport, balancing on the knife-edge of performance and endurance. You have to push the boundaries and failures can happen."

Mercedes say the entire team is "baffled and gutted" at the fact that Hamilton has suffered identical failures in his engine's hybrid system in the last two qualifying sessions in China and Russia.

But they add that they made a "monumental effort" to fly spare parts out to Russia overnight so Hamilton could start from 10th on the grid rather than the pit lane.

The letter explains in detail the engine problems both cars suffered in the race on the way to their one-two finish.

It said they saw "some alarming behaviour" from Rosberg's MGU-K - the part of the hybrid system that recovers energy from the rear axle - shortly after his pit stop.

"We spent a number of laps reassuring him that he had a good gap over Lewis and could ease off before the FIA gave us the all-clear to tell him to switch to a setting that would control the issue".

Hamilton's water-pressure issue, they said, arose shortly after this at a time the Briton was setting fastest laps and closing on Rosberg.

"We needed to await confirmation from the FIA of what we could tell him over the radio (as a result of this season's restrictions on communication between team and driver)," the letter said.

It said that, with no water pressure for what amounted to nearly a quarter of the race, "the job he did to nurse the car home and still retain second place was truly remarkable", adding: "We genuinely aren't sure by what miracle the car limped across the line."

Lewis Hamilton: I won't over-stay my welcome in Formula One

Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton insists he will not out-stay his welcome in the sport.

The 31-year-old has admitted on the eve of the new season that he does not see himself still doing what he is doing in a decade's time, and will eventually step aside to allow new talent to live the dream which has brought him three world titles to date.

Asked if he would continue for another 10 years, the Brit told BBC Radio 5 Live's Sportsweek programme: "I don't have plans to go that long, but I love what I do.

Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton says he will not out-stay his welcome in Formula One

"Honestly, it could be less, it could be more, who knows? Really as long as I keep enjoying it....

"There are only 22 of us that do it. Michael Schumacher potentially stayed maybe a little bit too long. When one driver stays, that means there's one less opportunity for others who might just be in the right moment to be able to step through.

"Every year I stay beyond, you over-stay your welcome because perhaps you are blocking the potential of another kid who was just ready to come through, so I want to be cautious of that.

"But as long as I am enjoying it and performing at my best, then I'll keep going. But I was thinking this morning, I feel like I can go on and on and on, personally.

"Hopefully within 10 years, and then I am going to move on and do something else and let someone else come and do it."

Mercedes driver Hamilton will set off in pursuit of a third successive championship success in Melbourne next week, and he will do so taking nothing for granted.

He said: "Coming into this year, I really feel like it's a clean slate. When I arrive at the track, I don't feel like I'm world champion - that's why I have number 44 on my car and not number one.

"I'm 44, the same as I was when I first started racing. I was here to beat everyone and that's how I'm going into the first race."

Lewis Hamilton the party animal still has the hunter’s instinct and glamour on the track

David Coulthard might have forgotten what it is to be young. Having kids does that to you. If memory serves, DC, as he is universally known in the paddock, indulged the hedonistic tendency with a fair degree of enthusiasm in his pomp, as you might expect of a square-jawed, multi-millionaire Lothario living in Monaco.

His thoughtful concern over the gadding about of Lewis Hamilton was a fair riff in his new role as Channel 4 pundit, but places him firmly in the pipe-and-slippers demographic. 

According to DC, Hamilton’s pop-star lifestyle off the pitch, which regularly sees him slipping the lid on backwards in the VIP salons of New York and LA alongside an adhesive member of the opposite sex, presents a clear risk to performance. Calm down, Pops, says the look in Hamilton’s eyes.

To be fair to DC, he recognised the weakness in the argument when pointing out the professional bling on Hamilton’s CV: three world titles, two of which had been claimed successively in the past two seasons while stepping straight from dancefloor to grid. Nico Rosberg submits to the lifestyle Coulthard advocates, returning between races to the Monaco home he shares with his wife and daughter. Thus far there has been only one winner.

OK, Rosberg’s conversion to a state of paternal bliss is a recent development and, some will point out, coincided with a sharp upswing in form. This is true. Rosberg snared pole at the last six races of the 2015 season, and raced to victory in the final three Grands Prix. It is only when we douse the period in context that the facts lose a little of their gloss.

Each of those victories came after Hamilton had won the drivers’ championship in the United States, and the run of poles in a period when Hamilton was racing circumstance as much as his rivals.

It is the most beautiful thing for a driver to know he no longer needs the victory to take the title. Hamilton did his business early, establishing his supremacy in the early part of the season. 

Here is how Hamilton phrased his approach to 2016 at a pre-season send-off at Mercedes headquarters in Stuttgart last week: “I have been racing for a long time and always managed to get myself in gear. I am fit and ready to go. I just do me. I do the same thing I always do.”

In other words, “eff off, the lot of you.”

Hamilton conveyed his dismay at what he sees as a tiresome line of questioning via his Snapchat account after recording on video a brief part of the Stuttgart party: “Same questions for the last 10 years, zzzz.”

Hamilton has by increments shed the corporate cloak that suffocates Formula One. It would have been inconceivable were he to have attempted a similar stunt when sat on the stage in Valencia at the McLaren launch nine years ago. Then, in his desperation and yearning to be there, he agreed to conceal his personality and his identity behind a compliant smile and McLaren-speak. 

Those were the last days of the big hello, a real launch in front of real people, eating real tapas, washed down with real bubbly. And all paid for by a company willing to pay £25m a year for the privilege of having its name on the car. Whither Santander now? Whither McLaren? Whither Formula One?

Hamilton is one of the few elements that still make it worth the watch. And in this phase of his career he has not only reached an operating peak but a full understanding of who he is and of what he is capable. 

In a revealing interview with Gary Richardson on BBC 5 Live’s Sportsweek he spoke of feeling “energised, excited and eager to get going” when the cars line up for the first Grand Prix of the season in Melbourne on Sunday.  

The last six months, he claimed, have been the best of his life. “Having a blast…travelling, sports, gaming, parties, doing fun stuff… training, sky-diving.” 

Turns out the excesses DC is worried about have coincided with the best period of Hamilton’s career. A happy Hamilton is a winning Hamilton, and unapologetically so.

The doubters, who hope last season’s post-championship drop-off in performance might be significant, face disappointment if the exuberance he ladled across the airwaves yesterday is any guide. 

He is not going to Australia feeling like a three-time champion, he advised, but with the same hunger he had as a 21-year-old in GP2 hunting down a seat at the big show. “It’s a clean slate. I don’t feel like I’m world champion. That’s why I have No 44 on my car, not No 1. I’m here to beat everyone.” 

And the evidence suggests he will as long as Mercedes can.

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg set to reopen fight for F1 dominance - Paul Weaver

I look forward to three teams battling it out for glory this season, with more overtaking at the sharp end, a better, more equable division of money to prevent half the paddock being permanently broke and a vision for the future that extends beyond the selfishly short term. Oh, yes – and I believe in the tooth fairy too.

Alas, none of the above will happen. Formula One will continue to be mired in politics, Mercedes will dominate once again and half the teams in the world’s most glamorous sport will still be raggedy-ass skint.

Yet doggedly – perhaps stupidly – I am looking forward to the new season. While it is difficult to see either Red Bull or Williams raising their game to confront the Silver Arrows, there is optimism that Ferrari may do just that, and win more than the three races they took off the Lewis Hamilton/Nico Rosberg power axis last year.

The expectation is the Mercedes hegemony will continue. They were so commanding last year they were able to down tools on their 2015 car early on and concentrate on developing a new model. But Ferrari’s technical director, Britain’s impressive James Allison, should maintain the improvement the Scuderia made last year, after they failed to win a race in 2014, the first time that had happened for 21 years. Ferrari are the biggest, most famous team in F1. If they can compete strongly it would reinvigorate the sport.

The reality is the championship is likely to be fought out between Hamilton and Rosberg, just as it has been for the past two seasons. Last year Hamilton was more dominant than he had been in 2014 but the final race of the season, in Abu Dhabi at the end of November, gave us something to ponder.

Hamilton had won the championship with his victory in Austin in October, with three races remaining. Rosberg had the better of him in the next two grands prix,in Mexico and Brazil. By the time the circus arrived at the Yas Marina circuit, where the British driver had won twice before, he was desperate to reassert his supremacy but he could not.

Yet Hamilton could not be accused of not trying. He cut swathes of time into Rosberg’s lead after his second tyre change and argued with his team over strategy. Rosberg, who had qualified for pole with a stunning lap, still romped home by 8.2sec. Hamilton won 11 of the first 12 poles last year, as well as 10 of the 16 races it took to clinch the title, but Rosberg finished with three straight wins and a run of six poles.

Hamilton is the most natural and fastest driver in F1 but suddenly he was the second quickest of the Mercedes drivers and there were signs he was taking his superiority over Rosberg for granted.

An important figure at Mercedes said recently: “Lewis believes he is three-tenths quicker than Nico but if he isn’t he automatically thinks there is something wrong with his car.”

Rosberg is famously assiduous in the work he does with his team. That is not to say Hamilton is lazy but like Ian Botham, who also relied on natural talent, he does not spend too much time in the nets.

There are still plenty of things wrong with F1. There is not enough competition between the leading teams and not enough overtaking. Everything is too technical and too expensive and TV viewers are tuning off. But F1, despite itself, just may improve on a disappointing 2015.

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg "the perfect couple" says Mercedes boss

Mercedes chairman Dieter Zetsche is happy with Hamilton's 'rock star lifestyle if he keeps winning F1 races

Mercedes-Benz chairman Dieter Zetsche has told Auto Express that he thinks his current pairing of drivers, current F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton and German Nico Rosberg, are the perfect couple. 

Asked if Lewis Hamilton’s famed partying could become a problem for Mercedes’ F1 team, Zetsche told us: “As long as Lewis wins races he can organise the rest of his life, as long as it is within the scope of our brand values, as he wants to.

“And when you look at the relevance of his personality and the social networks with 12 million followers and so on, what can we wish for more than a rock star? He’s the fastest on the track and that’s perfect.

“At the same time we have the other guy who’s as fast and has a very different lifestyle with a family and a kid. These are the two bookends and I think we are really very lucky to have them, they are the perfect couple, absolutely.”

Zetsche also revealed that he hoped that Formula One would become more competitive in future. At the end of the 2015 F1 season, Hamilton was 59 points ahead of Rosberg and 103 points ahead of third place Sebastian Vettel, while in the manufacturers’ standings Mercedes was 275 clear of second-placed Ferrari.

“We want to win,” said Zetsche, “Preferably in the last race by two points. But this is not our task to reduce the gap, but the task of our competitors.”

What do you think of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg as an F1 team pairing? Let us know in the comments below...