Lewis Hamilton isn't interested in starting a verbal rivalry with Max Verstappen as he brushed off recent comments by the Dutchman.

With Red Bull appearing confident of taking the battle to Mercedes in 2020, Max played down the Briton's five Formula 1 titles in the past six years by suggesting he wasn't "God".

Hamilton though offered a pretty simple response to that comment on Friday, hinting it's best Verstappen keeps his mouth shut.

“I find it funny seeing that," he said. “I’ve always known to do my talking on the track. Often I tend to see that as a sign of weakness.”

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Later, Hamilton would step behind the wheel of his new ride for 2020, the Mercedes W11, at Silverstone as the Brackley-based team conducted a shakedown of their latest car ahead of testing.

"I've just come out from being on the track. I've been doing this a long, long time but every time you get in, the excitement is exactly the same, if not more," he said.

"The car felt great. Obviously there's so much work that goes into building this car, you're only one of two that get to drive it.

"So you're really trying to pay attention to your surroundings, the seating position and feeling you're getting back from the steering column and a little bit of the balance.

"It's not that easy with the track not being perfect, but it all ran smoothly, we won't really know until we get to testing how good of a machine it is in terms of how big of an improvement it is.

"But it didn't feel like a big departure from where we were in Abu Dhabi, so that's a good start."