Hamilton back where it started

“Even now when I look back on last year, I wonder how I did it all as it is so hard to be consistent.”

Hamilton, with double world champion Fernando Alonso as his team mate at McLaren last year, won from pole position in Canada and went on to repeat the feat a week later in the US GP at Indianapolis.

At the end of an astonishing rookie season, the then 22-year-old Briton had finished runner-up by a single point to Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen.

Hamilton made clear how much that first victory had transformed his life. “Beforehand you know you can do it, but believing you can do it then actually doing it and making it happen is a different thing.”