DC warns Hamilton against taking 'Beckham route'.

Grand prix veteran David Coulthard suggests Lewis Hamilton should be mindful of his off-track commitments, whilst insisting his fellow Brit has 'everything he needs' to become F1 world champion.

David Coulthard - the oldest driver in the Formula 1 field - has dispensed some words of advice to Lewis Hamilton on the eve of the pair's home grand prix at Silverstone this coming weekend, warning his fellow Brit against going down 'a Beckham-style route'.

Hamilton has been widely criticised in the media in 2008 for paying too much attention to his off-track activities, consequently allowing his eye to be removed from the ball on race weekends and hurting his world championship challenge.

The detractors will highlight a distinctly scrappy performance in Bahrain early on in the season, and a brace of calamitous outings in Montreal and Magny-Cours earlier this month, with a series of expensive errors - none more so than running into the back of chief title rival Kimi Raikkonen in the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve's pit-lane - not only costing the young Stevenage ace his advantage in the drivers' standings, but indeed seeing him slip a full ten points adrift of the top spot, now held by Raikkonen's Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa.

In evidence of their argument, Hamilton's critics will point to the 23-year-old's budding relationship with Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger, a disastrous PR stunt in Turkey that saw him - still geared up in his full F1 driving suit - swung from a trapeze wire in the role of the god Apollo on the set of a local theatre show, and 'A-list' encounters of the like that saw him take to the stage during Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday celebrations in London's Hyde Park last Friday.

The McLaren-Mercedes star has also been helping to crew McLaren sponsor Hugo Boss' boat for the Round the Island yacht race off Cowes on the Isle of Wight, alongside triple Olympic medallist Ben Ainslie and Alex Thomson - what he called 'one of the coolest things I have done', and being described by Ainslie as having a 'natural feel' for sailing. Unfortunately, the vessel collided with another yacht before the race had even got underway, seeing the team subsequently stripped of victory. What's more, as if all that were not enough, the six-time grand prix winner is shortly to be unveiled as the new face of Reebok too.

The Daily Telegraph describes the phenomenon as the beginnings of a 'one-man industry', adding that: 'Hamilton has no rival in the pit lane for pulling power'. Whilst Coulthard acknowledges that fact, as a man who has been there and done it all - albeit perhaps not to the same extremes - during a 15-year career in the top flight spanning stints with Williams, McLaren and Red Bull Racing, he equally insists that it is important to know your limits.

"If you put yourself out there, there are going to be observations of where you're going, what you're doing," the 37-year-old told the broadsheet. "People will start to feel that they own a little bit more of you than if you keep a low profile, but that is a decision I am sure Lewis is well able to make.

"I don't think he will, but if you choose to fill that free time full of yahooing and all the rest of it, then you are going to turn up at a grand prix relaxing rather than getting on with it.

"I never had the spotlight that Lewis has. I can't imagine what it is like. To be the first black driver in F1, almost winning a world championship - all those things must be incredible - but Lewis unquestionably has everything he needs to be a world champion.

"He is one of, if not the most, well-prepared rookies. The only thing he doesn't have is the mental experience and development that inevitably comes through life.

"We are all better able to make decisions at the age we are today than when we were 23. That's just a fact; it is not a criticism. He will make more informed decisions in two and five years' time."

Coulthard himself got his own F1 break at the age of just 23 back in 1994, following the tragic death of Ayrton Senna at Imola, and was at McLaren four years later, when Hamilton was signed up to the Woking-based outfit's young driver programme by team principal Ron Dennis whilst still just a young karter.

The two drivers have remained close since, with Coulthard joking he saw Hamilton through puberty, and that Hamilton will now see him into the nursing home.

"He is in control of what will happen off the track at Silverstone," the Scot summarised. "He is a together young guy anyway.

"If you look at a Mika [Hakkinen] or a Kimi, they get very private and didn't or don't do a good deal. They are low-profile guys. Kimi is not off doing book signings or celebrity parties.

"If Lewis goes down a Beckham-style route he will end up being extremely busy at the race track and extremely busy away from it, which will take a toll."

Source : uk.eurosport.yahoo.com