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How good is Lewis Hamilton? How quick is he? Is he the luckiest rookie in Formula One history who happened to step into a McLaren Mercedes when it was one of the two fastest cars on the grid, or is he a driver of exceptional talent and speed who could leave everyone in his wake?

Over the first five races of this season, there has been much debate about this, fuelled by the pressure Hamilton that has been able to exert on Fernando Alonso, his teammate, who might have thought that he would be comfortable by now in the “No 1” seat at McLaren.

In Spain, Alonso’s supporters take the view that Hamilton is a lucky upstart who is not close to their hero in performance terms and that he should give up any ambitions of trying to take on Formula One’s youngest back-to-back world champion.

In the paddock, however, the view is different. It is hard to be scientific because there are many opinions and the evidence is contradictory at times, but the feeling is that Hamilton is quick, significantly in comparison with Alonso.

Hamilton is seen as a young gun driving with the exuberance of youth, a rookie who is loving every thousandth of a second of his first season in Formula One but who is also showing the control and maturity learnt during his unique apprenticeship with McLaren, which started when he was 12. We know that he is improving and growing in confidence with every race; what we do not know is his limit.

Alonso is not old at 25, but he is likely to be closer to his ultimate limit than Hamilton, 22, and the Spaniard’s much-vaunted past experience – supposedly one of his trump cards – is working for and against him in his battle for supremacy with his British teammate. On the one hand, he is possibly better at getting a result when the chips are stacked against him – as he did in Monaco two weeks ago; on the other, he tends to drive more cautiously than Hamilton and his previous life in a Michelin-shod Renault is hampering his performance in a Bridgestone-tyred McLaren.

To try to cut through the hype, The Times has gone back to the statistics and the old-fashioned stopwatch to see how the drivers compare (see graphic). The immediate difficulty is which time comparisons to pick. The most obvious might seem to be the third and final part of qualifying, when both drivers are on the limit, but this has to be ruled out because during four of the five race weekends this year Hamilton has been saddled with a heavier car (containing more fuel) than Alonso.

Instead we have picked the second session of qualifying (Q2), when fuel loads are likely to be similar, plus each driver’s fastest lap in races. We have also highlighted the fastest time by each driver over the three sessions of practice during each weekend. (These times can be misleading because teams use these sessions for a variety of purposes and achieving good lap times is not always one).

Taken together, the times show that the McLaren teammates are very close in performance. Their best laps are rarely more than a second apart and are usually separated by mere hundredths or thousandths of a second.

Hamilton is usually quicker in practice; he seems to come out of the garage and go faster straight away, which must be wearing on Alonso.

Looking at Q2 times and fastest race laps, we get a near dead heat, with Hamilton up in both categories in Bahrain and Barcelona and Alonso ahead in Australia and Monte Carlo, while honours were even in Malaysia.

Much detail is lost in this comparison, but the numbers underline that it would be wrong for motor-racing historians to look back on these heady days in Hamilton’s career and portray him turning up in Formula One and immediately driving the wheels off Alonso. More likely we are seeing the early skirmishes of a season during which the advantage will swing from one to the other.

In this scenario, the key determinant of which one gets the chance to take on Ferrari for a championship will be McLaren and Ron Dennis, the team principal, and the decisions he makes, race by race, on which driver gets the more aggressive strategy. So far, McLaren have favoured Alonso four times out of five, which reflects more their investment in him and expectations of him than the hard evidence of the stopwatch.

However, you do not have to be a starry-eyed Briton to see that the Spaniard has potentially a big problem on his hands if he continues to struggle on Bridgestone rubber and Hamilton continues to improve. After all, Hamilton is a beginner at this level who will be making only his sixth start in the Canadian Grand Prix tomorrow, while Alonso will be on the grid for the 94th time.

Alonso is a charming man and a true sportsman and there is no doubt he would hate to win a title that had been “organised” or “gifted” to him by McLaren. His dream is to become the first driver since Juan Manuel Fangio in 1957 to win consecutive titles in successive seasons with two teams.

Ferrari may stop him; if given the chance, Hamilton may, too.