Consider that for a moment.

The legendary German, just retired, had stamped his authority on the sport in a manner hitherto unseen.

Ninety-one victories and seven world championships attested to many things, not least complete and utter commitment, supreme ability and a competitive desire that was as strong when he drove his final grand prix in Brazil last year as it was in Belgium 15 years earlier.

And here was a rookie, already making people think of Schumacherf For sure, Hamilton possesses a remarkable level of natural ability. He was matching team-mate Fernando Alonso's speed early in testing, and looked good in long runs well before his first race.

But allied to that is supreme self-belief and confidence. That was beautifully demonstrated in Melbourne, with a superaggressive start that catapulted him into third place, ahead of the Spaniard. Most rookies would simply have been pleased to get away cleanly. Hamilton didn't, but his racer's opportunistic instincts not only rescued the situation but enhanced it.

Then there was Monaco, a circuit on which he had never been beaten. Always a wonderful place to watch drivers at work, it highlighted his Schumacher-like ability to maintain forward momentum at all times even when the car is out of shape for whatever reason, to rescue a situation and make capital out of it. Where Alonso will use a big twitch of the wheel to generate the grip he wants from the front of the car on entry to a corner, Hamilton guides his car in on a smoother line and trajectory to get the same result, and more often than not recently, to better it. Before a track has 'rubbered in', his classical style is often superior, the geometry of his line closer to the notional ideal.

At Monaco he would have the car set beyond a neutral attitude and just transitioning into a very slight oversteer in the tricky little sections by the Swimming Pool, where time can so easily be lost, so that it was already helping to turn itself in. Thus, lap after lap, he could all but shave the barrier on the inside of the corner with complete confidence and precision, while carrying significantly more speed.

Most impressive of all was that although he did actually make a mistake at Ste Devote, where he crunched a McLaren for the first time since a test in Valencia earlier in the season, and then slid up the escape road there twice in Saturday practice, it did not affect his equilibrium at all. Come final qualifying he put in a stunning lap when his car (already, it transpired, carrying six laps' more fuel than Alonso's), was at its heaviest while he was burning off fuel in readiness for the all-out lap that would subsequently be frustrated by Mark Webber. Even that early lap, with the car in nonoptimal state, proved good enough to put him second in the grid. And but for team orders he should have won that race.

The most telling thing about Monaco echoed that start in the opening grand prix: he was totally into what he was doing right from the start. There was no tentative 'feeling out' process.

Here was a true racer operating in his element with a complete self-confidence and belief in his own ability that was so inbred he didn't for a moment even need to think about it. He just did everything so naturally that it flowed beautifully.

"Every year as you step up there are certain ways you have to up your game and interact with the team, " Hamilton suggests. "There's a way of learning and you need to do that as fast as possible to get on the pace. Each year you analyse your last season, how did it go so well, how did you get to those stages? And then you try to improve that further."

Late last year McLaren chief Ron Dennis counselled caution. "Wherever Lewis ends up next year . . . and there's every indication that that should be an F1 car . . .

history accepts that no driver comes into F1 and has the level of success that would make him a championship contender, " he suggested.

"There will be one, two, three years of coming to grips with F1."

Now his man leads the championship. Even Dennis is entitled to get it wrong sometimes.