When informed of comments made by Nigel Mansell, the 1992 world champion essentially claiming that he'd had it too easy, Lewis Hamilton was visibly disappointed this afternoon, describing the F21 legend as "ill-informed".

Speaking at the Hay Literary Festival on Friday, Mansell claimed that Hamilton is "manufactured", alleging that as a child the McLaren driver had it easy with his early career essentially underwritten by the Woking team.

"Wow," said Hamilton when told of the comments this afternoon. "Clearly he has not been reading the right stories or he just has not got his facts right.

"I wasn't signed up until I was 13," he continued, "so I would love to see where the rest of that money was since I was seven. I just think he is clearly ill-informed and doesn't have the right information.

"He has his right to his own opinion, which doesn't really bother me," he added. "I don't really care about his opinion. He is a world champion, he was a great star and I look up to him, but I wouldn't have expected that from him. I don't know how he was funded when he was younger, but for us it was virtually impossible to find money. It got more and more expensive. My parents paid all the way until I was 13, by re-mortgaging the house. They were broke."

Yes, but you didn't live in a hole in the road Lewis, and you weren't forced to eat hot gravel!