Lewis Hamilton has been told a thousand times in the past few days that he is lucky still to be competing for the Formula One drivers’ championship. But looking at things from his perspective, he is entitled to wonder where all this good luck is supposed to have gone.

Hamilton is so lucky that his McLaren team have been riddled for much of the season with unprecedented infighting and disruption. Ron Dennis, the team principal and his mentor, apparently has such a loose grip on operations that he did not know that secrets were being passed around his camp.

Hamilton is so lucky that he has been dragged into a scandal whose wider ramifications have resulted in him becoming loathed in Spain because he has fallen out with Fernando Alonso. And he has had to put up with all the innuendo from the “Ferrari-gate” scandal, even though he is implicated solely by association.

The only McLaren driver who was known to be in a certain position to gain from the information leaked from Ferrari was Alonso, through his e-mail exchanges with Pedro De La Rosa, the test driver. As Hamilton said: “The only e-mail I’ve sent to Pedro was about a female.” Not even the World Motor Sport Council can quantify what concrete advantage was gained by McLaren, but Hamilton must endure all the doubts.

Hamilton is so lucky, too, that he was forced to miss an important day’s practice for the Belgian Grand Prix in Spa last week to appear in front of the FIA while the rest of the drivers, including Alonso, his main rival for the title, perfected their set-ups.

He must also share a garage with a two-times world champion in Alonso who is so disaffected that he will probably do anything to get ahead of the young Briton (and vice versa). A team-mate, too, who has reportedly been bunging bonuses to his mechanics in an effort to overhaul the rookie at the top of the championship.

So we can probably forgive Hamilton if he has not exactly felt the need to offer prayers of thanks to the FIA for sparing him in last week’s glaringly contradictory judgment. After years believing that a God-given talent can make him a legend of motorsport, the last notion that he will have been ready to embrace is that cheating, luck and/or the mercy of the sport’s governing body have put him – and kept him – at the top.

The idea that winning the title in his first season may be “tainted”, as Max Mosley, the FIA president, has claimed, may even come as an affront to a young man with Hamilton’s self-certainty. Given the 22-year-old’s increasing outspokenness, including his ill-tempered comments about Alonso “swiping” him during the race on Sunday, it was a surprise that he did not tear into Mosley rather than change the subject.

The intriguing question now is how many other people will buy into Mosley’s argument if Hamilton holds on to his shrinking lead and, in Britain, we can probably count them individually. Certainly no one who watched BBC Three’s Billion Dollar Man on Sunday night will want to believe that a triumph for Hamilton will come with an asterisk attached.

It was a programme that took you away from the skulduggery and back to the building of Hamilton’s career from a council estate in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. The fairytale story, in other words, that the FIA knew better than to bring crashing down.

There is sure to be at least one repeat, if you missed it, and the story will be told plenty of times on the round of chat shows that young Hamilton is bound to embark upon once this season is over. Or you can read one of the five books, including his own, which are being rushed out in time for the Christmas market. Hamilton may have spent 14 years constructing his career with fearsome dedication, but he has only just begun the journey to stardom.

Bolstered by clips from Blue Peter, whose coverage of Hamilton’s early career must count as a first scoop for a children’s television show, Billion Dollar Man reminded us of how his father, Anthony, juggled several jobs at a time, including washing dishes and putting up boards for an estate agent, to fund his son’s karting career.

The money kept the father-and-son partnership going in a sport where working-class black children were about as common as they are in the members’ bar at Augusta National. Indeed, racist abuse was one of the spurs to success. “In the past years I have had the racist names called to me,” a 12-year-old Hamilton said with the poise that has been his trademark until recent, frazzled days.

“The first time it happened I felt really upset. I told my mum and dad. I felt I needed to get revenge. But lately I just ignore them and get them back on the track.”

It could hardly be farther from a story of fortune or privilege, which is why Hamilton will hate accusations that some of his success has not been earned the hard way. This is a man who was gutted when Michael Schumacher retired because he wanted to test himself against the most prolific of champions.

The idea that he may need an advantage to reach the pinnacle of his sport would be almost as shocking to Hamilton as an accusation that he would try to gain one by illegal means. Some will say that he is lucky if he wins the championship, Mosley will say he is tainted. Hamilton may regard himself as a victim if the trophy comes with strings attached.

Beckham nears the end

David Beckham. Remember him? He used to be England’s saviour on the road to Euro 2008 before Emile Heskey came along. Now you would not put too much money on either of them pulling on the Three Lions again.

Beckham is nursing a knee ligament injury and is unlikely to return before the end of the regular Major League Soccer season in the United States.

And, given that the Los Angeles Galaxy have the worst record in the league - they lost 3-1 at home to the Houston Dynamo last weekend - their chances of reaching the play-offs are vanishing, which means that the former England captain’s next competitive club match may not be until April.

There have been some extraordinary twists in Beckham’s career, but reaching 100 caps, or another leading tournament, from this point may top the lot. But then I am sure this is not the first time I’ve written him off . . .

Just when it seemed that the departure of Freddy Shepherd from Newcastle United was going to leave a void in my sporting life, the Tottenham Hotspur board is working overtime to fill the role of most laughable directors. One of them was at it again over the weekend, briefing that Martin Jol, the Tottenham manager, has only a few games to save his job.

If Tottenham should win a few matches, no doubt it will put out another statement saying that the press speculation was ill-informed and that Jol has its full support. I would urge him to resign out of principle, were it not for the fact that he deserves every penny of a payoff.