KEY POINTS:
Was there ever a stranger kind of glory than that which finally eluded Lewis Hamilton, so close to the grave of his boyhood hero Ayrton Senna? Not, it has to be said, within the borders of anything that might be described loosely as competitive sport.
Right up to the final act in Sao Paulo there was a sense that the 22-year-old from Hertfordshire was being led, lap by relentless lap, along a plotline that the hierarchy of F1 had scripted out of deference to his phenomenal arrival - part star, part prophet of a sport that so badly needed reinvigoration after the departure of Michael Schumacher.
Sure, Fernando Alonso, a double world champion, and Kimi Raikkonen, had the talent and the competitive edge to make an intriguing battle of the Schumacher succession and there were some new young dashers on the scene, Nico Rosberg, son of a world champion and brimming with speed genes, and some said that the Pole Robert Kubica was just a truly competitive car away from making his own dazzling mark.
But then in the opinion of such ageing titans of the track as Sir Stirling Moss and Sir Jackie Stewart, there was something unique about the smiling kid from Stevenage, who like his idol Senna, had come to live for the adrenalin that floods in when you are racing not for career progress but to announce that you are quite simply the best in the world.
That Hamilton should have come so close to such a status so quickly, so seamlessly, that he has been able to restrict his mistakes to such a bare minimum and then, when they came, to treat them not as harbingers of failure but the merest passing inconvenience, is the reason we now have to cut our way through the extraordinary background of the industrial espionage and £50 million ($136 million) fine inflicted on his McLaren team.
It is why we have to say that along with the asterisk which must accompany all of Hamilton's wins this season, there is something that has been written quite indelibly.
It is that Moss and Stewart are doing something more than recognising mere passing celebrity - and a fortuitous set of circumstances which made Hamilton not a breath-taking prospect but a cold, hard certainty to be a key figure in the sport which has obsessed him since his toddling days.
If it is impossible to celebrate all, perhaps even a majority, of the circumstances that have shot him to such prominence, it is not reasonable to challenge the unswerving reality that has accompanied him to the podium so many times this benighted season.
It is that relentlessly he has displayed the quality which separates all outstanding achievers in any sport from the rest.
He is a young man of durable brilliance. His ambition is a still pool that apparently cannot be disrupted.
So many rocks have been hurled into it in the last month or so, but the surface remains as smooth as a glacier. Yes, there is an icy quality to young Lewis. People talk about his easy and uncomplicated charm, but then with what authority? How well does anyone really know Lewis Hamilton?
No doubt his father and patron Anthony is the expert and his pleasant, open face locks into rock-jawed resolution when he declares: "People have wondered whether Lewis would crack in the hard times which come to every competitor but I try to tell them that when they ask the question they reveal that they just don't know him.
"He has lived his life with one thing in mind, to be where he is now and you can be sure he will never be easily deterred - or distracted.
"Yes, I accept that the real test comes when you get the bad breaks, but he has a few of these now and he has just got stronger."
Hamilton rides crisis with such apparent ease he might be piloting the family car to the supermarket. In Brazil he was emphatic that the disaster in Shanghai, where a shredded tyre left him stranded in the pit lane - and still another race away from the world title - has been no more than a psychological flesh wound.
"I did wonder how it would affect me but I can say honestly it has left me stronger," he says.
While his rival Alonso has erupted from one bout of rage to another, railed against his team - on occasion no doubt with some reason - Hamilton has never shown the hint of an inclination not to play the party game. But then why would he?
From the first races of the season, he became the self-elected chosen one of Formula One.
He wasn't learning a trade at its most demanding level, he was engulfing it with an innocent but overwhelming ambition and natural talent.
Now some of that innocence has been lost along with the shredded tyre and the occasional points.
Hamilton knows he is favoured - knows, too, that he is equipped to take advantage.
So there we had him the day before the season-ending race, exchanging pleasantries with his rival, Alonso, he was supposed to hate.
Nothing had changed in their relationship, he declared, and if you could believe that, you could believe anything, including the outrageous proposition that a 22-year-old rookie could do in a few months something that eluded the brilliant Moss in a lifetime of technical brilliance and unsurpassable courage and nerve.
The race was his deepest test so far but whatever its outcome, Hamilton slipped easily into his cockpit with the knowledge that no one in his sport had travelled so far remotely as quickly.
That he has done so in a "sport" which has so systematically shed itself of credibility, that operates in a permanent state of civil war and appalling compromise, he makes it, almost uncannily, appear to be somebody else's dirty business.
He is the star with a Garbo-like inclination to be left alone - even threatening to exile himself in Switzerland - on all occasions except those that come with the job.
His homage to Senna over recent days has been in several ways a journey into a new world.
He said he had been touched to be staying just a short distance from his hero's tomb.
This suggests a little of the mysticism that was such a part of the Brazilian's fanatical pursuit of success, yet there has been little previous evidence in Hamilton of anything other than an unbreakable practicality in dealing with his situation.
He had arrived, no matter what the outcome in Brazil, at the place he had always wanted to be, and whatever compromises had been involved, they had been smoothed away each time he drove off in what has been often the fastest car on earth.
Frequently, Senna declared that he drew his strength directly from God. Hamilton, no doubt, would confess to having influential friends a little closer to home.
But there is a reason for such preferment and it flows from something more than the lottery of being picked out from the pool of young drivers who each year present themselves, as desperately as casual fruit pickers, for employment.
It is that Lewis Hamilton has more than special talent.
He has an implacable belief in himself. Without that, his story would hardly make sense.
- Independent
