Lewis Hamilton, the youngest champion in the world’s most glamorous sport, spent the hours after Sunday’s victory at a party in São Paulo. But while he celebrated with his girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger, of the girl band Pussycat Dolls, a more humble night out was being planned.

In Stevenage, where Hamilton grew up in a council house, shopkeepers want their new hero to switch on the Christmas lights this month. He also has an invitation to a glorious lap of the town in an open-top bus.

To further emphasise the adulation that Hamilton engenders in his home town, one of its streets is due to be named in his honour, although it is to be hoped that the good burghers of Stevenage have the sense not to line Hamilton Avenue, or whatever it becomes, with speed bumps.

More than 13 million British viewers watched Hamilton clinch the world championship in dramatic fashion with an overtaking manoeuvre in the final two bends of the Brazilian Grand Prix. Many Formula One fans around the world, however, appear reluctant to acknowledge his talent.

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Understandably, Folha de São Paulo, the local newspaper covering the city where Hamilton’s title challenger Felipe Massa grew up, dismissed the Briton’s achievement, pointing out that he had won only five grands prix to Massa’s six.

In Spain the reaction was largely hostile, which was expected given Hamilton’s tense relationship with Fernando Alonso last year, when they were teammates. But in Italy, the home of the Ferrari team that Massa joined in 2006, there was generous praise, with La Gazzetta dello Sport declaring: “Hats off to this 23-year-old Englishman.”

Opinion in France seemed divided, with L’Équipe praising Hamilton’s skill, intelligence and talent, while Libération described him as “egocentric, sometimes shifty and willing to do anything to meet his objectives”.

Hamilton’s achievement has left BBC executives congratulating themselves on a masterstroke as they prepare to inherit the sport’s broadcasting rights from ITV next year.

ITV counted an average audience throughout more than three hours of coverage from São Paulo of 8.8 million – an audience share of more than 40 per cent. Only the biggest Champions League matches have attracted more viewers, but it was the £55 million a year cost of screening those live European games that forced ITV to pull out of its Formula One contract two years early.

Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One’s commercial mastermind, handed the rights back to the BBC for the first time since 1996, when it screened Damon Hill’s world championship victory. Now the corporation has one of the biggest attractions in world sport. Roger Mosey, the BBC director of sport, said last night: “We are absolutely delighted to have Formula One back with us next year. I am sure Lewis will make it another thrilling season.”

Hamilton is now the odds-on favourite to win the BBC Sports Personality of the Year competition next month. In a year packed with sporting excellence, such as the spectacular gold-medal Olympic performances of Chris Hoy, Rebecca Adlington and Christine Ohuruogu, and the progress of Andy Murray, who is single-handedly reviving British tennis, BBC executives are expecting a record vote.

— Richard Hopkins won £125,000 after betting ten years ago that Lewis Hamilton would be world champion before the age of 25. Mr Hopkins, 55, from Folksworth, near Peterborough, requested odds after seeing Hamilton, aged 13, race a go-kart. He also won £40,000 last year for betting that Hamilton would win a Formula One race before he was 23. Britons won about £5 million from bets on Hamilton taking the world title.