There was a sense of inevitability about it, almost a sense of serenity. Lewis Hamilton won his first grand prix in his sixth race and the dominating emotion was: well, of course he bloody well did. What do you expect? The only mystery was why it took him so long.

Because Hamilton does not seem to be anything to do with precocious talent. By an extraordinary illusion, he looks exactly like the mature article, like the complete athlete, calm in himself, happy in his skin, as certain of his abilities as if they had been tried and tested a hundred times.

No wonder his team-mate at McLaren, Fernando Alonso, has got the jumps. Being a world champion is no defence against Hamilton’s slightly spooky sense of self-certainty. It was Hamilton’s easy, inevitable dominance in qualifying that spooked Alonso into his mad antics at the start, when he made a demented dash for the first corner and ended up going cross-country to concede a decisive advantage.

But Hamilton just drove. He drove with that sense of affinity for his conveyance that you occasionally see in very, very good horsemen – an almost passive sense of competitiveness, as if the driver or rider were merely a kind of vector for victory.

A horseman, like a racing driver, reaches out and establishes an affinity. It is the intensity of his sympathy with the capabilities and the limitations of his steed that differentiates the best from the rest. It is not that the car or the horse becomes an extension of yourself; rather, you become an extension of the beast that does the actual work.

It is almost mystical. I have listened to Ayrton Senna talk about the same thing. And watching Hamilton as he set about driving away from the best gave me the same feeling as I got when watching Senna – a sense of man utterly secure in his sense of his own destiny, a certainty that victory is inevitable, that life really can’t work itself out in any other way.

There is something gloriously naive about all this, and that, too, is part of Hamilton’s strength. He went into Formula One and immediately started collecting podium places. And his sixth race, he won pole position and then drove on to win. Why on earth not? That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it?

Life is supposed to be like that. That’s why Hamilton shows no self-consciousness in his dealings with the media. There is no side, no arrogance about him. He is simply getting on with the business of winning, and that’s really not such a big deal, is it? Not for him; it’s just what he does.

I have seen this serenity, this extraordinary sense of composure, very, very rarely. Perhaps in Tiger Woods, certainly in Roger Federer, when he is not playing Rafael Nadal on clay. I saw it in Brian Lara, in that extraordinary period of his life when he scored at least a single century every time he went out to bat. I have seen it in patches with Zinédine Zidane and Johan Cruyff.

It is that quietness in the heat of the action that is so compelling. It never occurs to Hamilton that things that are extremely difficult for others should be even remotely tricky for him. After the safety car came out and reduced Hamilton’s 20sec lead to a few yards, he simply sat back and did it all over again. He looked like a man who could do it again and again, all day – that’s exactly what he has to do, and that’s exactly what he did.

There is no anger, no defiance, no sense of confrontation in all this. Rather, it is a sense of cooperation with a machine: and the easy certainty that everything else will follow – must follow – as a result.

“It’s the beginning of something quite special,” Hamilton said before the race and again I was reminded of Senna, in his unabashed certainty of his uniqueness.

But if Hamilton is a special one, he lacks Senna’s messianic nature. With Hamilton, it is a quieter, more understated thing. Much simpler, too. He just feels very clearly that he is going to win an awful lot of races. An awful lot more people feel the same this morning.

It’s not that he has made the effort of his life; rather, he has simply come into his own. He just happens to think that it is perfectly natural for a chap to enter a sport and immediately – at once – to prove himself to be the best.

It’s a simple idea and it has frightened the life out of every other driver in the sport.

Pole star

Born: Stevenage, January 7, 1985 Age: 22 Lives: Tewin, Hertfordshire Status: Single Height: 1.74m Weight: 67kg Favourite music: Hip-hop, R&B, Reggae, Funky House Favourite artists: The Roots, Bob Marley, UB40, Chaka Demus & Pliers Hobbies: Playing the guitar, racing radio-controlled cars, books, gym, cycling, squash, tennis, karting Social: Partying with friends, chilling with family, cinema, watching DVDs