Having qualified alongside Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton was happy to dispel Paul di Resta's "myth" over Mercedes decision to swap its drivers chassis.

In the wake of a number of disappointing performances, which have led to increased speculation over his future, Valtteri Bottas' announcement on Thursday that Mercedes had decided to swap its drivers chassis around was regarded with suspicion by certain member of the F1 press corp.

When the Finn subsequently out-paced his world champion teammate in Friday's sessions, and said world champion at one stage proclaimed that; "there's something wrong with this car", the conspiracy theorists went into overdrive.

As ever, the Sky F1 team led the way, and in the moments after the end of qualifying, having put his - or rather Bottas' - chassis on the front row alongside Max Verstappen, Hamilton was keen to address the speculation.

"I saw you coming out with some myth and I was happy to be able to prove it wrong," the Briton told Paul di Resta. "The quality of our engineers' work, all the cars are exactly the same," he added.

Subsequently asked to explain his comment to the Scottish driver turned commentator, Hamilton said: "I heard yesterday that Paul was saying something about the chassis. I think he said there was a press release... I don't know. And then just creating the question about whether our chassis were the same etc.

"As you can see, today, I managed to do a great job with the same car, so it's no different. It's just that we, in general, are struggling with getting everything from the tyres and getting the car in the right window and it's proving tricky.

"It's not a 'put the car on the track and it works everywhere'," he insisted. "It's a great challenge, we're all enjoying the challenge and we will continue to keep our heads down."

Asked to explain what needs to be done when a driver swaps chassis in order that he can quickly get comfortable again, Hamilton replied: "It's basically the same tub fitted with your settings.

"The cars are built around us," he continued, "so normally you're not supposed to be able to feel any difference.

"Of course, we made the changes and it's been a difficult weekend so... of course, you start to wonder, at some stage, whether there are any differences but look at that result: we just got a great result today which just proves that it's all the same. It's normal that we rotate. We do this normally anyways."

"It's the same," added Bottas, who qualified third, 0.128s down on Hamilton. "If the chassis number would be the same on both cars, you wouldn't know the difference. But, of course, how it handles, in theory, everything is the same but yeah, I don't know. I guess you'll never know. I think it's more in the head.

"You think some chassis are better, some not. I don't think there's much difference."

Of course, should Hamilton's sole stop for tyres during today's race turn out to be a 48-hour wait, all bets are off!

Check out our Sunday gallery from Paul Ricard, here.