So how good is Lewis Hamilton? Is he already a world champion contender or will he follow the pitted road travelled by Jenson Button, whose most notable headlines this season have come courtesy of driving an eco-warrior car that looks like someone has thrown up on it after hammering the broccoli quiche?

The proof is not so much in the pudding as in the dog’s dinner of a first corner that effectively ended Fernando Alonso’s prospects of delivering a win for 140,000 yearning Spaniards.

Alonso gambled and lost. Meanwhile, Felipe Massa looked ahead to the next race and said Monaco was a lottery. Hamilton plugged into his default setting of flatliner calm and said: “I don’t see it as a lottery.” He still talks of living the dream and surpassing expectations, but the the only flicker of boyishness came when he said he knew that he was leading the championship following his second pit stop. “I had a good idea that Fernando was behind me,” he smiled.

Doing the maths also highlighted the practical side that is the key to Hamilton’s ascent to the nascent star status. If you can keep your head while all around you are gouging great lumps out of each other and indulging in postrace hissy fits then you might well end up both a man and a champion.

Yesterday, as his runners-up spot helped him become the youngest man to lead the standings since Bruce McLaren, Hamilton looked like a man who drives at 185mph but does not do risk. He was Steady Eddie with bells on. Of the first corner incident he shrugged and said: “Nothing to do with me.” He added that as long as the McLaren Mercedes remains reliable and he refrains from making mistakes, the results will continue to come; Alonso’s claim that he is less worried about Hamilton than Ferrari is a telltale sign that he is worried.

Alonso notwithstanding, the plaudits are coming thick and fast for Hamilton. Niki Lauda, John Surtees, et al have lined up to laud him. The cover of promising upstart has been blown and Hamilton is fast becoming the sporting hero of choice in a nation where England cannot beat Israel at football and Andrew Flintoff is lost at sea.

Some cautionary tales to temper the hype. At one point it seemed a matter of time before David Coulthard, the last Briton to top the standings after the first race of the 2003 season in Australia, would become champion. In his first full season for Williams he won in Portugal and had five pole positions, but he always seemed to finish the season third, albeit he managed a distant second to Michael Schumacher in 2001. At that time Britain’s boy wonder was Button. He was in the points in only his second grand prix, but development problems at Benetton, mistakes and then his contract dispute with Williams meant it took him 113 races to stand on top of the podium.

By that point the general public had turned off and were voting for Zara Phillips when it came to BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

So far Hamilton seems bereft of the foibles of other prodigies and you sense that inside his athlete’s body there is a pipe and slippers man trying to get out and go pigeon racing. He is massively more mature than some of his contemporaries. Massa’s attempt to overtake Hamilton in Malaysia betrayed a lingering impetuosity, while the way Hamilton stole the march on Kimi Raikkonen at the start of that race evinced the Briton’s controlled aggression. Stay consistent. Don’t make mistakes. He need only look to another motorsport to underscore his wisdom; very few people in motorcycling believe the Nicky Hayden, to be the best rider, but he is the world champion.

What remains to be seen is how Hamilton copes when he is no longer the darling of the British media. Andy Murray is a top ten tennis player at the age of 19. That is the stuff of fantasy, but he is now criticised for having a Transatlantic drawl and tottering around the higher echelons with a bad attitude and terrible dress sense. Wayne Rooney, too, exploded onto the Premiership scene as a Bash Street Wonderkid, but has since sworn at David Beckham, stopped scoring European hat-tricks and confessed to sleeping with the Hoover on.

Hamilton is still on honeymoon, but the bottom line is the top prize. Murray has not yet won a Grand Slam and Rooney has not won a World or European Cup. Amir Khan is another marketing dream, but he is currently fighting fodder. In his first year Hamilton has a genuine chance of becoming the Formula One world champion. “After one or two races we knew that,” Alonso conceded.

His case is different to that of Murray, Rooney, Khan and indeed Button in that he is blessed with the machinery that vents his talent. Who knows where Button would be now if he had been given a leg-up like this? That said, Button’s race was blighted by a mistake that led to him losing a wing.

Nobody, it seems, can clip Hamilton’s wings.

Drive time

So what else was happening way back in 2003, the last time the UK had a driver leading the championship?

— With global opposition building to the conflict in Iraq, the “shock and awe” offensive beginning in March, the political backlash was blamed for Jemini recording the country’s worst Eurovision result – the dreaded nul points. Singing desperately out of tune was obviously not the reason

— Australia won the cricket World Cup but were to be denied by the boot of Jonny Wilkinson in the rugby union version

— The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas on reentry

— AC Milan beat Juventus in the Champions League final

— The largest hailstone ever recorded fell in Nebraska

— The average house price was an affordable-looking £149,935, while a pint of lager was £2.17

— Arsenal beat Southampton 1-0 to win the FA Cup Final

— Concorde flew for the final time

— Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected Governor of California

— Celtic were beaten 3-2 by FC Porto in the Uefa Cup final

A young driver named Lewis Hamilton won the Formula Renault UK Series