It might seem incredible, but logic dictates that Lewis Hamilton is the favourite for the world championship - in his rookie year. Ferrari development seems to have fallen behind McLaren’s and his only other rival is teammate Fernando Alonso, who by throwing his toys out of the pram after the Canadian Grand Prix has shown serious signs of weakness.

Alonso has also revealed a strange immaturity. We saw the first hint of it at the end of last year with Renault and it was clear in Bahrain after he finished fifth to Hamilton’s second. He cannot bear to be beaten by a teammate, and until Hamilton’s arrival it was not something he had to deal with too much. Many great champions have reacted this way – certainly Ayrton Senna and, to a degree, Michael Schumacher. They can’t compute: “The same car as me, he’s faster, it’s not possible, something else is happening, they are favouring the other guy, he has a better engine or engineer.”

It is a measure of their total self-confidence and belief, but with Alonso it appears to go further. There is a certain bitterness, and he seems incapable of accepting that he can ever finish behind Hamilton. When he has an off day, it really is an off day, as in Canada, where he made five mistakes, and in Bahrain, where he finished fifth in a car that should never be lower than fourth. Hamilton can be behind Alonso, but not the other way around, it seems. Obviously this is brilliant news for Hamilton’s title campaign.

At Bahrain we saw from the body language after the race that something went on between Alonso and team principal Ron Dennis. Alonso appeared to just spin on his heels and walk off. That is still simmering, with Alonso’s “he’s got my ball and won’t give it back” attitude.

It’s a nice problem for the team to have and McLaren are doing a sterling job in managing it. The team is having to deny any favouritism towards Hamilton, only two weeks after being lashed for supposedly holding him back in Monaco and depriving him of victory in favour of Alonso.

While I applaud the have-a-go racer in Alonso, what he did at the first corner at Montreal was a serious misjudgment; he was never going to make the corner by braking so late and he didn’t need to do that. It was as if he had made his mind up beforehand, just as in Barcelona, where he collided with Felipe Massa going into the first corner. He has been very lucky both times. Forget skill - it was pure luck that he didn’t damage the car when he bounced across the track, that he didn’t hit someone when he came back on the circuit out of control and that he has not been penalised.

At Montreal he seemed to sense that Hamilton had not got away well from the grid. The drivers have a set procedure to follow on the start line after the team has studied the grip data generated by the practice start off the dummy grid. Hamilton found he had too many revs dialled in and overcompensated on the throttle with too few just as the lights extinguished. As a result he was marginally slow away. If Alonso had not predetermined what he was going to do into turn one, he made his mind up at this moment and was way too deep into the corner, like a new boy under pressure.

As in Barcelona, you could see Hamilton looking intently across, apparently driving on autopilot, and working out where Alonso was going to rejoin the race track. He kept his head when it would have been all too easy for him to get sucked into an incident too. Fernando’s afternoon went to pieces after that.

At the time Alonso is making pressure errors, Hamilton hardly seems to be feeling any pressure and we did not see a single mistake from him. He was asked a question about pressure and his reply was: “It’s not really pressure, it’s a challenge, an opportunity.”

I wonder if he has been preprogrammed, maybe by the team, maybe by himself, into always seeing things in this way. I wonder if that was how he was so good under the four safety car restarts at Montreal. Believe me, that is a tough situation. I’ve had it myself in sports cars; you work intensely hard to build yourself up a useful cushion and suddenly, because of someone else’s stupidity, you lose all that time advantage. As you sit there stewing with frustration, it is easy to lose your head and screw up the restart. Yet each time he was perfect and serene. I didn’t see so much as one locked wheel from him, never straying more than an inch off line.

Alonso is now saying: “I’ve never felt completely comfortable here since Lewis was announced” and that the British press is not being professional. He has obviously been reading the inevitable Hamilton-fest in the British papers. I cannot understand why drivers do that. I was once on a plane to Brazil and saw Senna being handed a dossier of the press reports by his manager. He sat there and studied them intently for the next couple of hours of the flight. I am pretty sure Hamilton isn’t reading the press, and I have no idea why Alonso is choosing to.

As things stand, it is all playing into Hamilton’s hands and the Spaniard must peg back some of the eight-point deficit. We are heading into tracks in Europe after today’s race that Hamilton knows like the back of his hand. He has had six consecutive podiums, his first win, he is leading the drivers’ championship, is in the fastest car and his teammate is feeling left in the corner of the playground. There is a real possibility that a rookie, a remarkable rookie, could win the world championship. And if he does, this young man who is already transcending Formula One could become the biggest sporting hero in the world for the next few years.

The team and his father, Anthony, are doing a superb job of being filters for this attention and expectation. I cannot see Lewis being the kind who enjoys an entourage of minders and briefcase-carriers, but he will need some protection of his personal space. He made me laugh when Mark Blundell and I were talking to him about restaurants. He loves a particular Chinese restaurant in north London that he wants to take us to because the food is great and he even gets a discount, apparently because they know him. I suspect that he will not be getting restaurant bills very often from now on.

First title for the greats Lewis Hamilton is on track to become world champion in his rookie season, but how long did it take some of the sport’s legends?

Juan Manuel Fangio second season, 1951, went on to win five championships
Jim Clark fourth season, 1963, won two championships
Jackie Stewart fi fth season, 1969, won three championships
Alain Prost sixth season, 1985, won four championships
Ayrton Senna fifth season, 1988, won three championships
Nigel Mansell 13th season, 1992, only title
Michael Schumacher fourth season, 1994, won seven