Lewis Hamilton is about to undergo the most high-pressure debut in Formula One history. At 22, he is not only starting his career with the high-profile McLaren Mercedes-Benz team, but also with the reigning double world champion driving the same car and sitting on the other side of the team garage.

When Hamilton secured his place on the race team, the story was carried by both the main channels’ six and 10 o’clock news. Usually F1 makes it on to those bulletins only if there has been a terrible accident or remarkable achievement. When he crashed in testing, it made the front pages of national newspapers. Whether it is F1 television, magazines or websites, Hamilton is the main story. Switch on the television and see a nationwide mobile phone advert featuring him. He is already transcending the sport before he has even driven in a grand prix.

Inside the world of motor racing the excitement is because he is fast, dynamic, exciting and likeable. Not because he is black, which rarely gets mentioned. In Melbourne next weekend he is going to have the attention of tens of millions of eyes burning into his crash helmet. When he takes his car out to qualify, with his teammate Fernando Alonso no doubt setting the sort of awesome lap times we have come to expect, and having to look over his shoulder at the speed of the Ferraris and BMWs, he is going to feel that pressure big-time.

Then he is going to feel it all over again sitting on the startline on Sunday. With a car as fast as the McLaren, at a team where expectations are so high, there is nowhere for him to hide, nowhere to go quietly about learning the business of being an F1 driver. Nobody cuts you any slack in high-level sport. Make no mistake, Hamilton is capable of handling the challenge: he is a very special talent. He is a future grand prix winner — I would not be surprised if he won a race in his first season — and is surely future world champion material.

Yet he is such a regular guy. Personable and good-looking are the words my wife used after he drove her around Bedford Autodrome a year ago. The same day he spent a good while sharing and spinning a Caterham around traffic cones on an autotest course with my son. The light faded long before their smiles.

He is exactly as you would expect of any fun-loving 22-year-old man, although curiously every picture I have seen of him lately looks rather stern. I hope McLaren are not trying to reprogramme him. It was fascinating to see him jump into a GP2 car last year and deliver such blistering performances, moving his mentor, the McLaren boss Ron Dennis, to the verge of tears.

Since his first karting victory in 1994, Hamilton has been destined for this day. He is grounded and is helped in this by his father, Anthony, who has backed and directed him all the way.

He is a nice kid from a nice family. Just seeing how he is with his disabled brother tells you that. This grounding combined with his talent has given him a self-confidence that allows such composure for one so young.

Dennis has backed him for 10 years, which says everything about his vision and how he has put his money where everyone else’s mouth was. Have his vision and passion surpassed his rationality by hiring a total F1 rookie? I suspect not.

Even when Lewis was racing in the junior formulas he was already appearing in the F1 paddock, getting his face around, becoming familiar with the environment. I was struck back then by his openness, his confidence: firm handshake, direct look into your eye.

I noticed his composure at close quarters at an awards ceremony over the winter at which David Coulthard had just told an amusing tale about two bulls and the advantages of maturity over youth. When it was Hamilton’s turn to get on stage, the compere, Steve Rider, made reference to it, looking to get a response, but the youngster just smiled and Rider had to go on to the next point. To resist that temptation under pressure in front of an audience of 1,200, because he knew that he would be going to a place he did not need to go, was telling.

Although Hamilton will be making his grand prix debut in Melbourne, he will already have driven several thousand miles in an F1 car. He has spent the winter pounding around all the right bits of Spain and Bahrain — and proving spectacularly quick. At Valencia, though, he had a big crash, big enough to write the car off and disrupt his testing schedule. He was confident and open enough to admit it was his fault.

This was a good sign on three counts. One, that he was pushing himself hard enough to have made the error; two, that he was able to take it on the chin. But there was a third even more impressive postscript: when he returned a week later, having had all that time to dwell on things, when negativity could easily have taken a hold and damaged his confidence, he was flawless and fast. He dominated testing that day and wound up quickest by a significant margin. It augurs well for how he might handle the early pressures.

He will be fortunate in that the new McLaren appears to be a fast car. I have not seen the key team players this pumped since their dominant 1998 season. Let us hope they achieve good reliability too.

Hamilton will, of course, be measured against Alonso, an awesomely tough barometer. The world champion is the best all-round performer on the grid without a question of doubt. Kimi Raikkonen may be faster but does not compare as a package. Alonso is a supremely confident guy who will not feel the need to plot the downfall of Hamilton. I doubt whether he will be going out of his way to help the Briton, but neither will he be looking to undermine him, which will be a key factor for the team.

I strongly suspect that Hamilton expects to match or beat Alonso by mid-season. That would be something of a challenge and a result. He will find it tougher than he imagined, although an insider tells me that the Spaniard already has a weary eye on Hamilton’s impressive long runs in testing.

There are other fascinating elements to this driver pairing. Alonso is new to the team and will be looking to create his own space, establishing how he wants to work. He will be calling certain shots. At the same time, his driving style is different from Hamilton’s. Watching him in GP2 last year, it was clear that Hamilton likes to dive straight for the corner apex and so will want a directionally responsive set-up. Alonso, by contrast, has developed this unique aggressive steering action and car set-up that induces a lot of understeer. The front tyres slide across the track and he then drives through them. So I would expect the team to have to evolve two different set-ups.

Hamilton will have to be strong enough to demand the car that he needs and not be shepherded or enticed down Alonso’s route. He will need to get his elbows out and create his own space within the team. Will his long-term relationship with the team’s key players from boy to man make this particularly difficult?

He has been around the team for years, even though only now has he started driving for them. He recently moved to near the factory and goes in every day when he is not testing, to “gain knowledge”, as he puts it. He visits the engine builders in Northamptonshire too, which is smart.

Hamilton will be able to lean on all of these things, plus his strong mental and physical conditioning, to make up for his lack of worldliness and technical experience. There will be days when he will not have the raw experience to deal with the curve balls that F1 can throw up. We will see him making plenty of mistakes — he made them in GP2 last year — but they will be forgiven so long as he has enough good days, and a solid start is important next weekend in Australia.

How to become a Formula One driver the Lewis Hamilton way

— Hamilton’s grandfather came to Britain from Grenada in the 1950s to work on the railways. Hamilton was born in Stevenage on January 7, 1985, and named after athlete Carl Lewis, a hero of his father Anthony

— He was given his first kart by his father, who ran his own IT business, on Christmas Day 1992 — six years later he was signed by McLaren at the age of 12. Between 1995 and 1997 he won five British kart titles. Hamilton won his first trophy when he was eight and received a letter of congratulations from Mark Blundell. The 10-year-old Hamilton continued to clock up fast times and titles

— In 1995 he had met Ron Dennis at an awards ceremony and told him his ambition to race for McLaren in F1. McLaren duly signed him on a long-term contract in 1998

— Between 1998 and 2000 he won European and world karting titles, and the Formula 3 Euro series in 2005. Last year he won the GP2 series

How British drivers have fared in their debut grand prix

Stirling Moss First race: 1951 Swiss, HWM, finished eighth First win: 1955 British, Mercedes Total wins: 16

Jim Clark First race: 1960 Dutch, Lotus Climax, failed to finish First win: 1962 Belgian, Lotus Climax Total wins: 25

Graham Hill First race: 1958 Monaco, Team Lotus, failed to finish First win: 1962 Dutch, BRM Total wins: 14

Jackie Stewart First race: 1965 South Africa, BRM, fi nished sixth First win: 1965 Italian, BRM Total wins: 27

James Hunt First race: 1973 Monaco, Hesketh, ninth First win: 1975 Dutch, Hesketh Total wins: 10

Nigel Mansell First race: 1980 Austrian, Essex Lotus, failed to finish First win: 1985 European, Williams Total wins: 11

Damon Hill First race: 1992 British, Brabham, 16th First win: 1993 Hungarian, Williams Total wins: 22

David Coulthard First race: 1994 Spanish, Williams, failed to finish First win: 1995 Portuguese, Williams Total wins: 13

Jenson Button First race: 2000 Australian, Williams, failed to finish First win: 2006 Hungarian, Honda Total wins: 1