Heading into the Canadian GP- and speaking before he qualified a distant seventh - he is guarded and, deep down, would rather be undisturbed as he watches the US Open golf on his phone.
As I stood in the queue at the fishmonger on the town square close to my home in the South of France yesterday, he was cutting the head off a sea bream with deft strokes of his razor-sharp knife.
JONATHAN MCEVOY IN BARCELONA: Lando Norris shipped seven points in his world championship fight as an unflappable Oscar Piastri won the Spanish Grand Prix from pole.
JONATHAN McEVOY: Lewis Hamilton should part company with Riccardo Adami, his strangely faltering race engineer, now. Nothing will be served by persevering with patient loyalty.
JONATHAN MCEVOY IN MONACO: Lando Norris won the Monaco Grand Prix for the first time in his career as he led the race from start to finish in the Principality.
JONATHAN MCEVOY: Lewis Hamilton crashed out of practice for the Monaco Grand Prix at 175mph - giving his Ferrari team two-and-a-half hours to piece his car back together.
JONATHAN MCEVOY AT IMOLA: You could look up at the screens at any point in Sunday's Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix and find yourself unable to escape the sheer brilliance of Max Verstappen.
F1 CONFIDENTIAL: Lewis Hamilton came to Italy yesterday and invoked his equivalent to 'Rome wasn't built in a day'. He asked for his fortunes at Ferrari to be judged over a 'few years'.
Many in the aviation world said James Asquith's plan to start Britain's newest airline wouldn't fly, but here he is, zapping a boarding card to get on to his own plane.
JONATHAN MCEVOY IN MIAMI: The Dutchman arrived in Florida late after his girlfriend Kelly Piquet gave birth to baby Lily, but he put sentiment aside to pip McLaren's Lando Norris.