This time he had to navigate a boat (or a ship, or a yacht, or a catamaran, I don’t really care) during a race. It didn’t go entirely according to plan, as The Times relates:

“This most famous of sailing novices was reduced to a stream of expletives as he first felt the impact, then watched the drama unfold as the £70,000 mast on a yacht named Atomic plunged slowly into the sea just feet away from us. ‘Oh no!’; ‘S**t’; ‘Christ’; ‘Oh no, look at those guys...’ ‘Oh noooo...’”

Even if this had not ended in another embarrassing prang for the British star it would still have been a stunt of questionable merit. The journalists present tried in vain to conjure up some connection to the world of motor racing:

“Then it was Hamilton's turn on the steering wheel. Now there are two types of novice on a sailing boat. Some people are all over the place and cannot grasp the relationship between the boat and the invisible force of the wind; others pick it up quickly and seem to have an instinctive feel. Hamilton was in the second category.”

Crashingly awful PR events are McLaren’s forte at the moment. Who could forget those preposterous picture of Hamilton dangling above a stage in Turkey?

Even the man himself, who is seldom given over to criticising his team, was forced to admit this was a stunt too far:

“I thought ‘that really was not cool’. I just turned up and got on with what I've been told to do. Now I’ve seen the footage and it’s one of the worst things I've ever seen. At the end of the day I have a cool image, and things like that don’t help.”

There is an irony here, as Hamilton has been quick to condemn criticism in the press of his approach to racing. That’s a dangerous game to play to begin with, particularly so when his own team often seem to be the ones making him look a fool.

Publicity is just one side of the PR coin. McLaren have proven themselves equally inept at the other vital skill: crisis management. With the benefit of hindsight, one can see the team’s headless chicken response to the drama at the Hungaroring last year ended up costing them one driver, two championships, and $100m.

Who could forget the stunning scenes in qualifying, when Fernando Alonso blocked Hamilton in the pits, preventing his team mate from completing a final timed lap?

Soon after qualifying McLaren made everyone aware that Hamilton had angered Alonso by refusing to yield position to him earlier in the qualifying session.

McLaren attempted to manage the situation by preventing further information from getting out. While the stewards investigated what had happened McLaren refused to allow the public to hear the all-important discussions between the pit wall and the two drivers.

With too few facts, rumours fanned the flames instead. Two newspapers claimed an angry, expletive-ridden exchange had taken place. McLaren denied it, but as long as they refused to provide transcripts of the discussion those denials were worthless.

A press conference including the two drivers provided further evidence of McLaren’s total inability to manage a story. Alonso and Hamilton gave diametrically opposing accounts of what happened, while Norbert Haug sat by and did nothing.

The stewards eventually concluded McLaren had aided Alonso in delaying Hamilton and had tried to prevent the facts of the matter coming out. In light of the way they had handled the story, it was hard to disagree.

The next day, Sunday, a fuming Alonso told Ron Dennis he had in his possession a series of emails that would badly compromise McLaren’s defence against accusations it had used confidential Ferrari intellectual property. According to Dennis, he threatened to give them to the FIA if Dennis did not rein Hamilton in. We all know how this story ends.

Hamilton thinks the press are making life unnecessarily difficult for him. He may be right. But McLaren haven’t exactly helped either.