Lewis Hamilton did not win the Spanish Grand Prix yesterday, but he emerged from an incident-filled race amazed to find himself the clear leader of this season’s Formula One drivers’ championship only four races into his debut campaign.

His second place behind Felipe Massa, of Ferrari, after a near-faultless drive at the Cicuit de Catalunya, was his fourth podium finish in a row and leaves him two points clear of Fernando Alonso, the double world champion and his McLaren Mercedes teammate.

Everyone in Formula One is finding it hard to take in, not least Hamilton. “The dream just gets bigger,” he said. “I keep saying I am living my dream, it is really true. I have been working so hard for this and to come into only my fourth grand prix and come out leading the championship with the top two drivers here is incredible.”

Hamilton has gone from a stunning first race in Australia, where he was third, to the best rookie in Formula One history and now, after three second places in a row, to the youngest championship leader in Formula One history.

The young man from Hertfordshire whose paternal grandfather drives a taxi on the Caribbean island of Grenada and who started driving for McLaren in karts when he was 12, is a genuine prospect for a drivers’ title in his first season, something that has never been achieved before.

At McLaren, the game-plan was that Hamilton would spend this season learning from the master, Alonso, yet it is the Spaniard who is behind in the points and it is he who has spent most of his time on the track staring at Hamilton’s rear axle.

With Hamilton ahead, there will be increasing pressure on Ron Dennis, the team principal, to allow Hamilton to have the best of prerace pitstop strategies – this weekend Alonso was given the better chance of a race win with a lighter fuel load in qualifying – but Dennis is unlikely to acquiesce as yet.

Either way, the next race is the Monaco Grand Prix and Hamilton will be going to the principality bursting with self-belief and looking for his first win on a street track where he has won twice already in junior racing.

Apart from Hamilton’s performance, the race staged before a 140,000-strong full house in hot summer sunshine, underlined that Ferrari still enjoy a comfortable speed edge over McLaren and that Massa – who was being watched from the garage and pitwall by his mentor, Michael Schumacher – is close to achieving his own dream of being the Italian team’s No 1 driver and leading championship contender.

After qualifying in pole position for the third time in a row and scoring his second successive win – his career tally now stands at four – Massa drove a mature and measured race and never looked in any trouble after fighting off a controversial first-corner challenge by Alonso. His only drama came when, unbeknown to him, there was a brief and frightening fuel fire on his car as he pulled away from his first pitstop, which quickly died away as the fuel burnt off.

While Massa prospered, his much more highly paid teammate, Kimi Raikkonen, again failed to deliver. Despite having a reputation as the fastest man in Formula One, he was sluggish at the start and allowed Hamilton to steal third place from him as the leaders headed for the first turn. Raikkonen profited from Alonso’s tour into the gravel at the first corner, but then retired when a problem in the wiring to the alternator stopped him on lap nine.

The race featured eight retirements (the highest so far this year), among them Ralf Schumacher, who was hit from behind by Alex Wurz in the Williams at turn ten on the first lap. Nick Heidfeld, in a BMW Sauber, was eventually stopped by a gearbox problem, but his woes began at his first pitstop, when he left the box with a front wheel-nut unattached.

Jenson Button, of Britain, and Rubens Barrichello, his Honda teammate, started well from fourteenth and twelfth on the grid respectively, but it all went awry as Button emerged from his first pitstop when the two “Earth Cars” came together, resulting in Button losing his front wing.

Button claimed responsibility, admitting that he had clipped the apex of the curb at the first turn as he rejoined the race and the impact threw him off line into Barrichello’s path. Barrichello went on to finish tenth while Button was twelfth as his miserable season continued. Of a sunnier disposition will have been David Coulthard, who finished an excellent fifth.