Hamilton says newspaper report 'piece of rubbish'!

Lewis Hamilton has slammed a newspaper report that suggested he was demanding $1.5 million per week to sign a new Mercedes deal.

Boss Toto Wolff has already rubbished the claims, telling a reporter "You must question where you get your drugs from".

The original report, labelled as exclusive by the London newspaper The Times' correspondent Kevin Eason, cited sources who said Hamilton "has decided that he must be the best-paid man on the grid".

Indeed, Hamilton's negotiations with Mercedes - which he is conducting only with the aid of his long-time lawyer Sue Thackeray - have been protracted, and the outcome continually delayed.

But the British driver insisted in Melbourne: "There is nothing unusual going on.

"We are basically there, there's just a few teeny little bits that we will probably iron out over the next few days and I'd be hopeful that we will have it sorted," Hamilton told the BBC.

As for The Times' claims of $1.5 million a week, he said that was "completely nonsense".

"I heard about one story that I had been asking for a million pounds a week. That is the biggest piece of rubbish that has been written for some time," said Hamilton.