The race champ seems to have caught the pop bug from his Pussycat Doll girlfriend.

Lewis Hamilton has said spends as much time working on his music as he does preparing for races these days, though it doesn’t seem to have affected his performance on the track – he won his second world championship in Abu Dhabi last week.

The Formula 1 driver is apparently working on his debut album at every opportunity. “I have been writing a lot, even on race weeks,” he told BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat. “When I was in Japan, I was in the studio, Monday to Wednesday. Then, Thursday to Sunday, I was racing. Then I was straight back in the studio.”

The wannabe R&B singer says he’s influenced by the “great greats” like Michael Jackson, Prince, Jay Z and, er, Irish rock wimps Kodaline.

“At the moment music is just a hobby, but I’m very serious about it,” he said. “I built the [home] studio for Nicole, so she didn’t have to leave the house to go back to LA, and now she can hardly get in because I’m always in it.”

As the Guardian points out, Hamilton has been recording songs since at least 2013, when he began writing material with pop singer-songwriter Angel. “He’s a proper singer,” said Angel in an interview at the time, praising Hamilton’s “smooth vocal”. “It’s a real diversity. He’s got rap — ‘dirty south’ kind of tunes, some massive pop records and soul records. We’re doing all types of genres. We’ve written about 12 songs so far.”

But can he hope to reach the heights of Jacques Villeneuve’s 1997 single ‘Foolin’ Around’?
 

Or fellow sportsman Ian Wright’s actually-sort-of-decent Pet Shop Boys-produced ‘Do The Right Thing’?
 

Or even Andy Cole’s outstanding 1999 effort, ‘Outstanding’?