I’m not a playboy, says Hamilton

22-year-old McLaren driver says he is disappointed with reports about his love life

ISTANBUL: Formula One sensation Lewis Hamilton has hit out at attempts to portray him as a playboy racer. The first black Grand Prix driver whose sheer talent has stunned Formula One this season, said the truth was very different. “I’m not a playboy. I haven’t gone out and bought lots of expensive cars, I’m not dating all these women,” the Briton told reporters at the Turkish Grand Prix, which he goes into leading teammate Fernando Alonso in the championship standings by seven points with six races remaining. “If I was, then fair play and write stuff about me. But I’m just trying to lead a normal life.”

Hamilton said he was disappointed with the reports. “All those stories are completely wrong,” he declared. “I was supposed to go away with my friends, with the lads and have a lads’ holiday, but I thought it was a bad idea at the mid part of the season where I’m leading the championship.”

“I thought it was better just to relax, do some training and I was invited on to the boat and they took care of me — there were 13 of us on the boat and there were three of the Ojjeh (McLaren owner Mansour Ojjeh) daughters and they all had their boyfriends there.  When I first got there, I wasn’t expecting to have pictures taken of us and what you don’t see in that picture is that there were 12 of us in the back of the boat throwing each other in,” Hamilton added.

“At the end of the day, it probably wouldn’t be so bad if I was getting together with all these women but I’m not. I just found out the other day that I’ve slept with (pop singer) Dido. I don’t remember it,” he added. Hamilton said the media intrusion had affected others close to him.

“We’re still great friends and we talk all the time but the papers just keep on bringing that up. It’s devastating for both of us,” he said of the relationship with his former girlfriend and the implication that he had cheated on her. “Now I am supposedly dating one of the Ojjehs, which is completely untrue, she has a boyfriend. We are just great friends. Then I went to the cinema the other day with my best friend and his fiancee and my friend Mohammed. The papers said one of them’’s my bodyguard and I’’m seeing this girl. So now I’’m cheating on someone else.”