Hamilton Shines In Silverstone Gloom

Lewis Hamilton tried to quote Martin Luther King after the British Grand Prix, but in the heat of the moment he could not remember what he wanted to say. The McLaren driver stumbled over his words, and ended up with the rather less than poetic: "This week has been tough - when you lose, you learn a lot more." The line he was searching for was this one: "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." Whichever words you choose, Hamilton proved on Sunday that he has that quality required by all great sportsmen – the ability to shine in adversity.

And oh how he shone at a treacherously wet Silverstone. It was a performance that seems certain to go down as one of the greatest drives in Formula One history, one that is already being talked of in the company of those produced by Michael Schumacher in Spain in 1996 or Ayrton Senna at Donington in 1993, among others. This was a day when one driver made the others look like amateurs, when his performance reached such heights that it scarcely seems possible.

At times, Hamilton was four or five seconds faster than his pursuers, even team-mate Heikki Kovalainen in a similar car. These sorts of margins are not unknown in F1, but they tend to happen only when the very greatest drivers are at their best in conditions that test the field to the absolute limit. In all these cases, it is the apparent effortlessness of it that is most astounding.