Throughout the past week, everybody capable of stringing a sentence together has been telling Lewis Hamilton to find a new personality. Apparently he just won't do as he is. So what did he do yesterday? He found one. Just like that. As a result, he extended his lead in the Formula One World Championship with one race to go.

It was perhaps as remarkable an achievement as his first-season brilliance last year, and maybe as unexpected. Instead of the brains-in-the-locker-room, foot-to-the-floor boy-racer who delighted us all with his thrilling naivety, and who failed so miserably at the Fuji Speedway in Japan a week ago, we found a canny old pro.

All those who thought that Hamilton didn't do event-free races have been forced to think again. The man who tends to supply a story every lap decided instead to give us a long-awaited display of tedium. You want a procession? Then here's a procession: pole position, win the first corner, extend the lead, cruise home.

It was efficient, it was calm, it was thrillingly dull; it was all the things that Hamilton is famous for not being. Clearly he has been down to the personality shop and got a new one. He was pleased to win, but for once he was not overwhelmed by his own brilliance. It was just routine, the routine of being a champion.

That is one of the most fascinating things that sport brings us: the unfolding narrative of a personality as it develops under extreme stress. Every sporting biography is a rite-of-passage novel, a portrait of the artist as a young man. It is something that has to happen, because top athletes start off so bewilderingly young. Their youth means they are capable of soul-deep changes, sometimes more or less overnight, matters reflected in dramatic alterations in performance and decision-making.

Most people experience a similar process during the years of dramatic change that we must all go through before we reach the midway point in the journey of life. But most of us do so in private, without style or brilliance or drama, or if there is drama, it is generally played to an audience of one.

But in sport, changes are acted out before the world in the form of riveting and revealing action: Andrew Flintoff turning from a fat waster to a pared-down force of destruction; Andy Murray turning from sulky gap-year kid to potential champion; David Beckham turning from much-hated fop to beloved match-winning leader.

Can you change your personality by sheer force of will? Or does your hard-wired personality have a number of different aspects that can be expressed? Or does sporting journalism - does the nature of sport - simply prefer one-dimensional personalities, finding subtleties too bewildering to cope with?

Do I contradict myself? Walt Whitman asked this overwhelming question, adding: “Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” Hamilton, being large himself, has beautifully contradicted himself: the crash-happy boy-racer and the serene winner apparently coexist within him.

Which will we see in a fortnight's time in São Paulo, Brazil? After all, the situation is the same as it was last year: Hamilton has a seven-point lead in the championship. He blew it then, why should he not blow it now? But it is not the same. It never is. For a start, it is a year later.

An enthralling race awaits us. In pole position, we have Hamilton, the cool customer of Shanghai. Just behind him on the grid, and in an identical car, we have Hamilton with the red mists of Fuji. Will this second Hamilton attempt a wacky first-bend manoeuvre and drive them both into the gravel? Or will the first Hamilton let the other pass with a shrug and finish a canny and championship-winning fifth? It's in their hands now.

Wayne Rooney comes to realise selflessness helps nobody

Wayne Rooney has a lesson for us all: on no account be unselfish. On no account be obliging. On no account whatsoever should you sacrifice yourself for a greater cause. Far better for all concerned to play the diva, to throw a sulk, to get the hump, to say that if I don't get exactly what I want, I'll thcream and thcream til I'm thick.

But that's never been Rooney's way. When it comes to football he is a transparently decent and generous man. As a result, he has become a doormat, and that has been to the great disservice of Manchester United and especially England. If he were keener on himself than he was on those teams, both those teams would be better off.

Rooney just loves to play. Play him anywhere, he will take on the challenge with demented enthusiasm. Play him in goal, he loves it, always nagging for a dive-about in training. He has been played wide on the left, as a fetcher and carrier for others, and he has been played as a lone striker, so that he can get kicked while others play football.

Everybody wondered what had happened to that brilliant boy of 2004. But now he is playing in the right position: he is second striker for United and England and he can't stop scoring goals and setting them up. He's in the form of his life. Again.

Bosses do what the difficult buggers want - it's less trouble. The decent guys get the dirty jobs, because they don't complain. So let's all make a new resolution: be a diva. It's better for us all.

Football can survive much, but not fixing

Using Harry Redknapp for target practice with 50p pieces at Aston Villa; fisticuffs at Millwall; abuse of Jimmy Hill at Fulham: these are all unpleasant things, but football has carried on through much worse. Match-fixing, as is being investigated in the recent game between Norwich City and Derby County, is different.

The first things merely damage football, fixing destroys it. All sport depends on our belief that it matters to those who are doing it. Without that faith, sport is worthless.

Let's just enjoy Murray one win at a time

I am trying awfully hard not to wish Andy Murray's life away. Every time he plays tennis, we don't watch a match, we continue the countdown to his first victory in a grand-slam tournament. It's almost impossible to write about him without mentioning 1936, the last time a British man won a grand-slam singles title. We can't watch a match without thinking of the next.

Far wiser, if far harder, to be like a footballing philosopher and take each match as it comes and enjoy the progression up to the present date. That's what I have been trying to do in the past week, as Murray won the Mutua Madrileña Masters - at least, on the rare occasions I have been able to tear my attention from the ballgirls.

What struck me, particularly in his semi-final against Roger Federer, was that he competed against one of the greatest men to play the game as if he had every right to be there, every right to be in the same company, every right to trade shots, every right to win games. That, alas, was precisely what Tim Henman lacked. There is that touch of authority in Murray's game that - well, we should enjoy it every time we see it, rather than wondering what it means for some unspecified time in the future. Murray: too good to hurry.

Drama does for pursuit of excellence

I am increasingly saddened by the enthralling Test series between India and Australia. The action is brilliant, why is nobody watching? Because one-day internationals and, in particular, Twenty20 have taken over as must-see entertainment on the sub-continent. The pursuit of drama has eclipsed the pursuit of excellence. Nothing wrong with drama, it's just a lower form of pleasure, that's all.