Mercedes' Niki Lauda has offered some fascinating insight into what transpired behind the scenes after Lewis Hamilton's botched qualifying session in Baku recently.
Speaking in an interview with Red Bull's 'Sport & Talk' TV show which was taped last Friday but aired only last night, Mercedes' non-executive chairman claimed that Hamilton completely thrashed his private room in the team's hospitality unit, after crashing in qualifying minutes before while team mate Nico Rosberg had secured pole.
"He did it because he had crashed," Lauda explained.
"He told me I couldn’t come in because he was going to destroy everything. This is how it was. He’ll have to pay for that [the destroyed room]. You can count on it."
Lauda also addressed Hamilton's comments in the press following Baku, in which he said that his relationship with Rosberg had become 'surprisingly good'.
The Austrian denied all was well between the two men, and accused Hamilton of blatantly expressing a lie in order to come across publicly as the 'peace maker' within the Mercedes team.
"Lewis lied about this, simple as that," explained Lauda.
"He just said something. He wanted to be the softener in order to have his peace last weekend. You can rely upon it, he is not a peace maker. The fight gets hotter the longer Nico is in front."
Just how the atmosphere will be in the Mercedes camp at Silverstone is anybody's guess now, given last Sunday's recent on-track clash between Rosberg and Hamilton, and in light of Lauda's latest revelations.
Suffice to say, it's unlikely Hamilton himself will be happy with Lauda's claims, and the Mercedes chairman may just live to regret his revelations.
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