“Lewis and Toto will have that conversation together and if Toto is not empowered to give Lewis what he wants then Lewis has the ability to go to Ola Kallenius at Daimler and say ‘Ola, I want to do this deal, you are also the shareholders, can you make this happen?'” Coulthard explained.

“Mercedes have the ability to add should they choose.

“They also have the ability to say to Toto ‘we are not investing any more money in the drivers than we did last year.

“If Lewis wants more money the answer from our side is no – you have to go and find it from somewhere else’.”