A little more than a year ago, a cosmetics company was on the verge of offering Lewis Hamilton a £50,000 sponsorship, but it pulled out, not sure if the unknown would hit the big time. Today, that same deal would cost the company £5 million - and counting.

The rise and rise of Lewis Hamilton is a sporting phenomenon that will trigger the ringing of cash registers the moment the wheels of his jet from São Paolo hit the runway in Britain this morning. For, after a year of driving alongside - and beating – Fernando Alonso, who is paid 44 times more in salary than he is, Hamilton will start negotiating his payback.

Experts calculate that a £10 million-a-year basic salary is the starting point but, in reality, the sky is the limit for a youngster on a path to riches trodden by only the most exalted of stars.

Anthony Hamilton, Lewis’s father and manager, has played down any notion of making big demands on the McLaren Mercedes team, who have nurtured his son for a decade, investing an estimated £5 million. But Hamilton Sr is smart enough to know that his son has been catapulted into an earnings stratosphere inhabited only by men such as Tiger Woods, David Beckham and Michael Schumacher.

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BACKGROUND

• Hamilton driven to despair in Brazil

• Search for answers gets under way

• Lauda and legends so quick to spot Hamilton greatness

• Champagne on ice after parties crashed

BACKGROUND

• Hamilton ready to overtake Beckham

• The young man will soon have his time

• The Insider - October 22

Multimedia

• Should McLaren win appeal?

According to Nigel Currie, director at brandRapport: “He has everything advertisers and sponsors love, in that he is handsome, articulate and, of course, the first black driver. But his timing is also perfect. He has arrived at the very moment that Formula One had a gap after the retirement of Schumacher. On the wider scale, the value of Beckham is diminishing in Britain and everyone is longing for a new hero. Hamilton is that hero.”

Hamilton is a pauper by comparison with his two title rivals for the World Championship this season, Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen. While Alonso is on £15 million annually and Raikkonen gets a £20 million salary at Ferrari, Hamilton’s basic wage for this season is thought to be £340,000. Thanks to a £7,000 bonus for every point he has scored this season, he has crashed through the £1 million barrier.

That will change when pay talks start at McLaren’s headquarters in Surrey. McLaren may be forced to give in to any demands Anthony Hamilton might make, simply to keep the most valuable commodity in Formula One. More likely is that the Hamiltons will moderate their cash demands in exchange for Ron Dennis, McLaren’s team principal, accepting, for the first time, that a McLaren driver can control his own image rights. Dennis has never allowed his drivers to do personal deals in case they interfered with McLaren’s corporate image.

Only Michael Schumacher has succeeded in linking personal sponsors with his team, when Ferrari allowed him to sign a £5 million-a-year deal with a German bank to put its logo on his team cap. Hamilton could now follow that pattern with a plethora of personal endorsements that would turn even a £10 million annual salary into pocket money. Beckham at peak was making £20 million a year in endorsements, while Schumacher’s range of sunglasses, caps and even a branded vacuum cleaner transformed the Ferrari driver into a one-man sales empire ringing up £50 million annually.

But Hamilton’s rise will have spin-offs far beyond the living room of whichever fabulous mansion he buys with his newfound wealth. Alonso attracted leading sponsors to McLaren when he switched from Renault and Hamilton is certain to drag big names into the team, more than paying back the team’s investment in his career – and offsetting the worst effects of the £50 million fine imposed on the team in the Formula One spying scandal.

Formula One is set to benefit, too. Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One’s wily promoter, was watching a sport in decline as it was ruled year after year by Schumacher. Since Hamilton burst on to the scene, Formula One is back in demand, with ITV reporting viewing figures up by more than 30 per cent on average. Last night’s race was expected to attract the highest Formula One audience of the year, at about 10 million. That propelled advertising rates to about £10,000 a second – equalling rates charged for Saturday’s rugby union World Cup final.

With numbers such as those, Hamilton is on course to become the biggest cash generator that Formula One, even with all its yachts, private planes and supermodels, has seen.