The prospect of Lewis Hamilton joining Red Bull next season was effectively dismissed on Tuesday by that team’s principal, Christian Horner.
But that will not stop the frenzied speculation over Hamilton’s future, or his current state of mind, when the paddock reconvenes at Silverstone this week for the British Grand Prix.
Nor will it stop the speculation about what any potential move might mean for McLaren. Or Red Bull. Or what effect that might have on the rest of the grid. This is the sort of transfer gossip which keeps websites in business.
Pretty much every possible combination of drivers and teams has already been touted and we have not even reached the August break yet.
Hamilton’s future is the biggest story in town, and will be until his contract — which still has 18 months left to run — is either renewed or broken.
There are unconfirmed reports that he has a break clause allowing him to move at the end of the current term if certain conditions are not met.
Hamilton has done little to dampen the speculation, insisting he will “look at all options” before making a decision, but Horner appeared on Tuesday to rule out the possibility of him joining reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel at Red Bull.
“A Hamilton-Vettel combination, on paper, would look very attractive to any team.
"However, what we have to look at is the dynamics of any partnership like that and it’s difficult to see how two sportsmen at the absolute top of their game could work in harmony under one roof,” said Horner, who denied that negotiations could be going on above his head.
“That’s where the dynamics within a team are so important. History demonstrates more often than not — whether you look at Prost and Senna, or Mansell and Piquet — that it doesn’t tend to work.
“So our understanding is that Lewis is committed to McLaren next year.
"We are under a long-term relationship with Seb, he is a product from Red Bull junior programme and we are very happy with the job Mark Webber is doing. It’s difficult to see how Lewis fits into that.
“Ultimately any driver decision has [Red Buller owner] Dietrich Mateschitz’s sign-off. But at the end of the day [chief technical officer] Adrian Newey and I go to him with recommendations and he has backed them every single time.
"It is his team but he has not had any dialogue with Lewis or his management.”
Webber, 34, is on a rolling year-by-year deal at Red Bull and claimed earlier this week that the team want him to stay.
Horner did not disagree. “With Mark being 35 in August we’ve reached a stage in his career where we felt it relevant, on both sides, to take it a year at a time,” he said.
“We are not looking for anybody else. I don’t believe Mark is looking to go anywhere else. When the time is right we will sit down and have what is hopefully a very straightforward conversation.”
Of course, if Red Bull are seriously considering Hamilton, the last thing Horner would want is that fact made public.
Nor did Horner definitively rule out a move — indeed he was careful to say that Hamilton was “probably one of the top three in the world” at the moment.
But the tone of his language was consistently negative concerning the possibility and the feeling persists that of the two parties, Hamilton is keener to keep the option open, possibly as a means of gaining leverage in his negotiations with McLaren.
Hamilton’s frustration in recent weeks — illustrated by his Ali G ‘Is it cos I is black?’ outburst in Monaco and his not-so clandestine meeting with Horner in Canada last month — has been palpable.
The relationship with the team which has nurtured him since the age of 13 really is in danger of souring. But the problem is he may have no alternatives.
Talks between his new management, Simon Fuller’s XIX Entertainment, and McLaren are understood to begin this summer but it appears Hamilton’s camp will not be able to use the threat of whisking him off to Red Bull as a means of ramping up his price.
Not that that will stop the speculation.
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