The standout element that makes Hamilton a great

Consistency is a word that conjures images of unflashy, plodding dependability. Nobody embarks on the road to Formula 1 aspiring to be the most consistent, for in sport the preferred narrative is usually of brilliance, of extraordinary moments, of inspiration, of unearthly powers.

Lewis Hamilton stands on the brink of a sixth world championship and his CV provides such magic moments in abundance. But it's the relentless excellence that binds his body of work together into an extraordinary whole. For 13 seasons he's been winning in F1 and shows no signs of abating; his Mexican Grand Prix victory makes it five times in six years that he's won a double-digit number of races in a season.

Take any snapshot of Lewis Hamilton's career, say a run of half a dozen races, and it's possible to find many others who have matched those achievements over an equivalent period. But take two, three, four such snapshots and the number drops off until eventually, you have only a few all-time greats who achieved such relentless success.

That's what marks out the greats, which perhaps explains why Hamilton made a barbed comment about Max Verstappen being "spoken of so highly by so many people and built up onto a pedestal". It was a gentle 'show us your medals'.

In Hamilton's case, what makes him extraordinary is the line connecting all of these individual moments together into crushing, continual success. He has the silverware that backs up his brilliance. And he has achieved that success in a variety of cars, multiple different rules sets, over every conceivable type of circuit and up against some formidable team-mates.

When his current Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas was asked in Mexico what makes Hamilton such a tough opponent, he didn't default to the usual answers. He might have reached by reflex for 'speed' or 'racecraft', which are perhaps the two go-to parts of Hamilton's game to focus on. Instead, he went straight for 'consistency'. Specifically, consistency of pace.

To translate this into a statistic, Hamilton is the only driver in the history of grand prix racing who has won a race in every single one of the seasons he appeared in. The table below shows the drivers with the best ratios of seasons won in to those contested, with any year in which a driver started at least one race considered.

Like all statistics, this only tells part of the story. Fangio, for example, only contested two world championship races in 1958. Michael Schumacher's hit rate is reduced by the three winless comeback years at Mercedes and his half-dozen outings for Jordan and Benetton in his rookie year in 1991. There are similar caveats to be applied to all the other drivers in the top 10.

Axiomatically, Hamilton has been a winner in every single season because his car has been a winning car. But decision-making is regarded as a key characteristic of a world champion, and you can hardly criticise the timing of the one switch he's made in his career, from McLaren to Mercedes.

But how many drivers in F1 have had such opportunities but not that extra something needed to deliver on them? Far more than have actually achieved greatness.

How many drivers in F1 have had such opportunities but not that extra something needed to deliver on them? Far more than have actually achieved greatness

That said, it hasn't always been so easy. In 2009, the McLaren started the season unable to make Q3 and Hamilton still came through in an improving car to win two races - and he would have won the season finale in Abu Dhabi as well but for a brake problem. Team-mate Heikki Kovalainen, a seriously capable driver, was unable even to get on the podium in that car.

McLaren's poor start to the 2009 season was the cause of the longest winless streak in Hamilton's F1 career - just 10 races. Even in his 'worst' season, 2011, when he became embroiled in a bizarre number of incidents, he won three races. Even if you judge Hamilton by that season alone, he's a very good driver but the majority of his body of work is exceptional.

That year was one of only two times he's been beaten by his team-mate over a season in what was arguably Jenson Button's best year. The other was 2016 when Nico Rosberg relied on some slices of luck to beat Hamilton.

But it wasn't just luck, and it was this year that proved the watershed that allowed Hamilton to rise to even greater heights of consistency. It was when he truly realised that you have to crush the opposition when you can to maximise your points cushion just in case you have a run of luck against you.

Bottas, Rosberg's successor, is one of an unfortunate breed of grand prix driver, the very good ones who find themselves paired with an all-time great. Who knows how many times he's completed a qualifying lap delighted with his speed only to hear he has been outpaced by Hamilton. The constant battering will have impacted him and it's to Bottas's credit that he's still chipping away at his weaknesses to ensure he's respectably close.

But as his comment about consistency underlines, it's an impossible task. It's easy to underestimate Bottas's performances this season, not least because his tally of three victories to Hamilton's 10 seems mediocre.

It will only be once the dust has settled on his illustrious career that Hamilton's exact place among the greats will be defined, but the question of whether he is a great has long since been answered in the affirmative

On average this season, he has qualified 0.131s off Hamilton, a gap which has increased in recent races primarily thanks to the pace difference in Singapore and Sochi. That he crashed while straining to beat Hamilton in Q3 in Mexico having been just thousandths behind after the first two sectors shows how hard he's trying.

That's a quality the greats share, the capacity to make the very good look mediocre. Transpose Bottas into a midfield team and he'd probably be one of the strongest performers in that part of the field. He just can't consistently match Hamilton even though he can eclipse him on his day, such as at Suzuka where he outperformed him.

Some argue that Hamilton had it easy, pointing to a gilded run through the upper echelons of karting and the junior formulae thanks to McLaren, a plum seat for his rookie F1 season and a run of top cars in which he couldn't fail to rack up title after title. It's a fatuous argument because you can point to the opportunities any sporting great has had and claim their success was inevitable.

But how many drivers in F1 have had such opportunities but not that extra something needed to deliver on them? Far more than have actually achieved greatness. While any sporting great will have had a slice of luck on their side, their own contribution is more significant.

Hamilton has made the most of his opportunities and shown a voracious appetite for self-improvement to get within arm's length of the two great records of F1 - Michael Schumacher's 91 victories and seven world championships. That determination to win still burns brightly, and could certainly motivate him to continue in F1 for a good few years after his current Mercedes deal expires at the end of next season.

While he's never been one for statistics or looking back, over the past few years Hamilton has started to show hints of recognising what his legacy could be. Whatever happens from now, it will be a remarkable one. Underpinning these qualities, of course, are all the qualities you would expect of a great driver.

Obviously, he's seriously fast and remains a great overtaker even if he hasn't had many occasions to remind us of his racecraft this year. And in a race like Mexico, when the rear end snapped on the power out of the first corner and he managed to gather it up without wiping out Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel, he showed how even his mistakes tend to be mitigated.

Mistakes, of course, do happen for even the greatest - but for Hamilton these days they are astonishingly rare and, as Toto Wolff pointed out last weekend, he has a knack of finding a way out of tricky situations when they do arise.

That wasn't necessarily the case in the early years of his F1 career, but all credit to Hamilton for learning from his experiences and emerging as one of the most formidable grand prix drivers there has ever been.

It will only be once the dust has settled on his illustrious career that Hamilton's exact place among the greats will be defined, but the question of whether he is a great has long since been answered in the affirmative.

There are plenty who seek every opportunity to do down what Hamilton has achieved, but he's a generational talent who it's a privilege to see in action.

Statistics provided by Joao Paulo Cunha of FORIX