The bare statistics of Lewis Hamilton’s first seven grands prix are staggering: leading the world championship by 10 points, a third place, four seconds and two victories — a trophy for every race, as well as two pole positions and a fastest lap. He has made just one major error, but that was in free practice at Monte Carlo. This also speaks volumes for McLaren’s speed and reliability.

How has it happened? Before we consider his talent, we need to see it in the context of his preparation. He began karting when he was eight years old. So he has been a racing driver for 14 years, or two thirds of his life. In British karting you race virtually every weekend, doing at least three heats and a final, and starting those heats from randomly allocated positions, ensuring a front, mid, and rear grid slot. So by the time these young men are in their mid teens they have completed hundreds of races and have learnt race craft and how to pace themselves. That sort of experience is gold dust.

The karting mecca is Italy and those like Hamilton who race there learn two invaluable things: working with a chassis manufacturer and a tyre supplier. In terms of how you hone your equipment, these are two of the core skills of Formula One that don’t exist in the junior car racing categories, which tend to feature single specification chassis, engines and control tyres.

Even Sony Playstation driving games help with their preparation, but Hamilton has moved on from that — he now gets to play on the multi-million-pound McLaren simulator, which, I am told, is incredibly realistic not only in how it recreates the feel of the real car but also in how it responds to set-up changes. He has done a lot of his training on this — you do not want to be educating your driver in the real thing at £3,000 per lap, just as you wouldn’t want to train a jet pilot in a 747 jumbo.

Once they graduate from karting and onto the junior rungs of car racing, there is effectively a reset button. Setting up a kart, which has no suspension as such and is one big spring, is in many ways an illogical process — there is a lot of voodoo about how you change it instinctively as the grip of the track changes.

A car has to be set up very differently, and that filters out quite a few drivers who just cannot make the transition. Also with a car on the wide circuits you cannot cut across the grass and the kerbs so much and you can’t nudge people off with your side-pods as in a kart. And then there is the matter of dealing with gears and a clutch.

There’s then a slog through the junior formulae. By this time, most drivers will have a manager and they need to be starting to get noticed as the stakes are getting increasingly higher, with around £500,000 needed for an F3 budget and the thick end of £1m for a season in GP2. If you want to get noticed you had better be sure that you are winning races when people do watch you. Look at the CVs of most of the F1 starlets and they have won championships at junior level and key events, such as the Macau F3 race and Monaco support races.

So that’s the general background of all the potential megastars coming through now. But Hamilton had yet more help, particularly with regard to mind management.

There was a time in F1 when if you walked into the paddock with a mind coach of any sort you would be instantly written off. But that attitude is changing, and Hamilton is one of the reasons. McLaren are very much into that, and it is pretty obvious why. If you are spending £200m running an F1 team, your attention to detail is intense and highly professional. You have 1,000 people dedicated to putting two cars on the track and you cannot afford to have all that riding on the shoulders of a sportsman who is not completely sharp.

So teams are increasingly recognising this and getting drivers into a programme at an early age. I was talking to one expert in the field who said that if you have not started grooming a driver mentally and physically by the age of 16, it is already too late.

Ron Dennis, the McLaren team principal, also makes the point that when Hamilton pulls the gearshift paddle behind the steering wheel he wants him to know not just that it changes the gear but how it changes the gear. And I am pretty sure that Hamilton is familiar with the internals of his gearbox and engine. Then there is the way he drives the car, which may well suit the 2007 control tyres, too, as the F1 jockeys now have to ease their cars into the corner. They cannot apply too much steering lock or the front tyres lose interest and slide.

This is well suited to the technique Hamilton has of “backing” his car into a corner with the rear end sliding. It helps turn the car and he can keep forward momentum despite the back sliding. Normally, having the back of the car out of line would lead to inconsistency and damage the rear tyres. But, like Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna and Mika Hakkinen, he seems to have a way of instinctively carrying it.

Watching him on the track and looking over his shoulder during the in-car footage, it’s clear that he has a beautiful fluidity. His pole lap at Indianapolis was fascinating. During the first half of the lap he was totally relaxed at the wheel. Very calm on the steering, one fluid movement each time, not hustling at all. Then he made a mistake at turn eight, and was a bit scruffy at nine, at which point the mind management kicked in. He calmed it all down and drove the last bit of the lap just like he had driven the first.

In the race at Indianapolis, the brilliant Fernando Alonso, Hamilton’s teammate, attempted to make two passing moves on him down the long pit straight into turn one — once at the start and again on lap 39. Hamilton saw him, positioned his car defensively and drove the corner perfectly. It made Alonso so frustrated that he drove towards his own pit wall on the next lap, showing Hamilton and the watching world that he did not have his emotions totally under control.

But there is one dimension where we cannot yet know how Hamilton stacks up: can he lead a team?

It is one thing to arrive in a top team with the best car and be able to deliver the goods, but it is quite another to be the one leading the process which produces that car. Hamilton did little testing last year when the current car was being conceived, and he is now benefiting from the end product of an 18-month process he was not part of.

Every time you go out in the car you make critical decisions that mould the way a team and car develops. It is all too easy to lose your way. An F1 car is never more than a prototype, evolving all the time. Despite all the computer data available, the man holding the steering wheel is the priority in the whole process. It still comes down to his feel, driving style and experience. The data can only make sense when applied to his demands.

In this dimension we have to reserve judgment on Hamilton. With all the technology and data available, it is rare for a team such as McLaren to arrive at a circuit with the car anything less than 95% perfect.

But the signs are good. Team members tell me that the whole qualifying procedure is now seriously complex but that since day one Hamilton has done it perfectly.

Because he can drive without error, and with so much apparent ease, he is able to carry out specific tasks that enable the team to fine tune their race weekend strategy.

You cannot help but wonder just how good Hamilton can become.

Drivers’ standings

1 Lewis Hamilton (GB) McLaren 58pts

2 Fernando Alonso (Spa) McLaren 48

3 Felipe Massa (Bra) Ferrari 39

4 Kimi Raikkonen (Fin) Ferrari 32

5 Nick Heidfeld (Ger) Sauber 26

6 Giancarlo Fisichella (Ita) Renault 13

7 Robert Kubica (Pol) 12

Sauber Heikki Kovalainen (Fin) Renault 12