Lewis Hamilton had just produced a drive of breathtaking brilliance to win the German Grand Prix and, having finished all the podium celebrations, the winner’s press conference and assorted television interviews, was about to walk back into his team’s motorhome.
As Hamilton walked in, still dressed in his driving suit, the milling throng burst into spontaneous applause and cheers; everyone wanted to shake his hand and hug him as the team’s winning anthem pumped out on the speakers.
Such are the pleasures of life for Hamilton, who now rules McLaren like a young prince and is treated with affection and love by his colleagues who, like him, believe that it is his destiny not only to win the world championship this year, but for many years hence. That, of course, is because there is something special about Hamilton on the track and his performance yesterday, like his drive at Silverstone in the rain two weeks ago, was indeed special. Having dominated the field in qualifying, the 23-year-old, who now leads the championship by four points, started in blisteringly fast form, whipping round Hockenheim’s sweeping corners and twisty “infield” section half a second quicker than Felipe Massa, of Ferrari. The Brazilian, who started alongside him on the grid, was to finish the day looking shell-shocked in third place, behind an improbable second place for Nelson Piquet, his young fellow countryman, in the Renault.
Hamilton was in a class of his own as he played his car like a virtuoso in front of thousands of Mercedes employees in the crowd at a circuit that is a home from home for McLaren. In the early stages there was something almost Schumacheresque in his precision and ruthlessness and it looked like we were in for a clinical but uneventful afternoon. Then came the curve ball and a sequence of events in which Hamilton revealed his fighting qualities.
After a big smash for Timo Glock, the Toyota driver, whose car suffered a suspension failure at 130mph and then slewed across the track before hammering into the pitwall, the safety car was deployed. McLaren and every other team faced a difficult decision. Most of Hamilton’s rivals were pulled in for fuel, to last them until the end of the race, but McLaren decided to leave a somewhat puzzled Hamilton out there behind the Mercedes saloon. They were gambling that the interruption would be short and that Hamilton would be able to build a big enough lead afterwards to pit again and still win. It was a debatable decision and, with hindsight, it was probably wrong.
Hamilton was like a climber who, through no fault of his own, had fallen in sight of the summit. Now he had to climb all over again because when he did pit for the second time he came back out in fifth place, nearly 19 seconds off the new leader, Nick Heidfeld, of BMW. Between him and an improbable victory were his team-mate Heikki Kovalainen, Massa and Piquet and he had only 16 laps of the 67 left to get past them.
There are plenty of drivers, even at this rarefied level and even with one of the two fastest cars at their disposal, who would buckle in the face of this task and settle for a podium position or less - Kimi Raikkonen, of Ferrari, who could finish only sixth, being a case in point, as are Massa and Kovalainen - but Hamilton is not made that way. There was never any question that he would settle for less than a win and there was little doubt that he would pull it off so long as those who would have to be beaten did not do something stupid.
First Kovalainen made way, another stark reminder of his demotion to a supporting role to Hamilton, then the driver in the smoky yellow helmet in the car with No22 on its silver nose set about butchering Massa’s lead as Heidfeld pitted. Like a lion stalking his lunch, there was only one way this was going to end as Hamilton put the Brazilian out of his misery at the Spitzkehre hairpin, his favourite killing ground.
Afterwards he revealed that he thought he had won at that point and had to be told by his team that there was still Piquet to pass. Again big cats and their prey was the imagery that came to mind as Hamilton hunted down one of the worst rookies in recent Formula One history and roared away to his fourth win of the season.