What Makes Lewis So Fast?

A huge amount of natural ability, and supreme levels of self-belief and commitment, reckons MARK HUGHES

Monaco, Thursday afternoon: Lewis Hamilton's first run on the supersoft Bridgestones, the tyres that team-mate Fernando Alonso's times suggested were worth one second-plus of laptime over the 'plain vanilla' softs.

An out-lap to bring them up to temperature, start gunning it in the last third of the lap, feel the big boost in grip, then across the start/finish line for the beginning of the flyer.

This was going to be fantastic. A man on a mission, determined and totally confident that this weekend has his name stamped on it, right through to the core. Completely at ease with the oversteery set-up that really suits this place, he'd always been routinely devastating here in the junior categories.

Last year, in the opening GP2 qualifying session, before anyone else had built up their confidence, he was hustling his car around four seconds clear of the ordinary mortals in the other cars. Now, coming into the fifth race of his F1 career, he was leading the world championship. But he'd yet to win a grand prix. Well, if there was anywhere to put that right, it was here.

In the morning session Lewis had almost completed his running on the harder tyre - and been sensationally quick, 0.6sec up on Alonso - when there was a glitch. About to go out again they attached the airline to the starter, it whizzed round, there was a clunk and the engine remained inert. A tooth in the starter motor had broken, and dropped into the gearbox.

'Sorry Lewis. You may as well get out. We're going to have to take the floor off to get at it. No more running this morning.'

Alonso, by contrast continued running uninterrupted, tried the soft tyres and found a huge boost in grip, albeit for just one lap. They were never anything like as fast again, even after he'd cooled them for a lap.

So into the afternoon session, with the car fixed, Lewis completed his harder tyre data runs. Then pitted, downloaded and had his first set of supersofts fitted. Which is where we came in, beginning the flying lap.

With the grip he was sure he'd have, he knew he could brake a whole chunk later for Ste Devote. He did so, the left-rear momentarily locked - when they looked through the data afterwards they could see the tyres weren't quite up to temperature - the car flicked viciously out of line. In this split-second he could've opted for the escape road and abandoned the lap.

But that would have wasted the big grip that set of tyres was ready to give, and wouldn't ever give again. And Lewis was so sublimely confident around here, he reckoned he could still rescue the corner - and the lap. Because it's the sort of thing he often does.

"The most remarkable thing about his driving," says an admiring and ever-so-slightly envious Martin Brundle, "is how he is comfortable having the car moving around him but still moving forwards. Very, very few drivers have it and normally it's 'lift off, turn in, slow down, sort it out'.

"To be able to carry forward momentum like he does with the car out of line, is gold dust. Michael Schumacher could do it. The number of times we saw Michael have a moment and thought, 'That's it, he's blown the lap, oh hang on, he's on pole'. Lewis has had that same ability from day one in F1."

At Monaco this aptitude buys you even more time than at other tracks. Low grip, short duration slow turns means the ability to get the nose pointed at the apex - to let the dog see the rabbit - is rewarded more highly than ever, and laptime starts coming to you in great big chunks.

It's a phenomenon Ayrton Senna used to demonstrate around here. And there's more to the Senna comparison than just the yellow helmet in the McLaren cockpit: without wishing to resort to hyperbole, the body language of the car out on the track is very like Senna's.

There is a beautiful grace about his line of attack - big, wide sweeping lines of entry, rear tyres virtually touching the barrier on approach to get absolute maximum track width, a high but not overpowering entry speed, turn the wheel quick but smooth, not violently like Alonso, and don't do anything else. Just let the car arc into a slight oversteer before it's reached the apex - well before in some places. His line into, through and out of a corner is near geometrically perfect.

Like his approach to the first section of the swimming pool at Monaco, car sideways while still travelling past the yachts, nowhere near the apex yet but already aligned perfectly to it, the direction change already made.

So when he makes the apex and comes out the other side he doesn't need additional steering lock, the car doesn't land all awkwardly after being launched off the kerb like most others do. Instead it lands flat and already pointing direct at the second kerb of the left-right sequence where its progress is similarly clean but magnificently fast.

He was like this there on his installation lap on Thursday morning. On his first F1 lap of Monaco. This wasn't a guy thinking, 'okay I'd better be careful to keep out of the barriers here', but one who didn't even give that thought valuable space in his head. This was a guy wanting only to express himself fully on a track he loves, that he can lock into instantly. It's child's play to him.

It's probably significant that in the first part of the afternoon session at Monaco, with both McLarens still on the harder tyre, Alonso had completely eradicated that 0.6sec gap to Hamilton. By now the track was much grippier, with much more surface rubber laid down. This conforms to a pattern based on their very different driving styles.

Fernando likes to take huge speed into the corner, but by necessity from a shallower angle because he's turned in earlier, enabling him to stay longer on the power, effectively stretching the straight out a little further before getting on the brakes. As such, although the car's heading for the apex, it doesn't have enough yaw.

If it stays like this, it will arrive at the apex needing a lot of steering lock, its direction change not completed. Instead, he loads the car up with sudden steering, often while still on the brakes - then releases the brakes, giving the front tyres a sudden boost in lateral grip. It makes for the required sudden direction change.

So when the surface is low grip - when it's dusty or wet - Fernando can struggle in comparison with Lewis. In such situations the front tyre sometimes doesn't have enough grip to produce the sudden direction change when loaded up in this way; it can be overwhelmed.

In this situation Hamilton's direction change is relatively unaffected because he's relying on a combination of set-up and driving input to use a loose rear end to get his direction change. Fernando's direction change is front-led.

Lewis's is more rear-led and as such his style will work over a wider range of tyre and track surface grip. Certainly the guys at McLaren have been amazed at how balance shifts in the car just don't seem to affect his laptime.

"It's amazing," says one of them. "He'll tell us that the car is moving towards more oversteer or understeer, but will then say, 'it's no problem, I can drive round it. I'm just letting you know'. I've never seen anything quite like it." This is said by a guy who was in the team when Senna was there...

How much more speed he finds from higher grip will be more linear than Alonso's, who once past a certain critical point of grip will suddenly find a big chunk of time. So with the new rubber boost of qualifying, we see Alonso has usually been slightly quicker than Hamilton - even on those weekends when Fernando has been otherwise struggling.

In perfect conditions of high tyre and track grip, Alonso's style lends itself better to squeezing every last bit of grip from the car, because there is no compromising of rear grip to find a chassis balance.

Lewis will tend to have more pre-load on the electronic diff to give him that rearward-led feeling. He may have a little less rake built into the front/rear ride heights. Watching him at Massenet, the over-the-crest-of-the-hill entry to Casino Square, it was amazing to see how committed he was to both the car's handling trait and his own talent.

With the right-rear wheel virtually skimming the barrier at a place where some others are a third of the way across the track's width, he crests the rise and turns in to the blind corner that follows. The silver car swings into oversteer even as he's braking. Half a degree more and he'd be having to fight it, half a degree less and he'd be running wide and into time-consuming trouble. But he induces it at the perfect moment - then just sits there.

No more inputs at a place where most others are fighting the steering. He just sits, car on the absolute knife-edge but perfectly aligned. The only other driver I've seen do this on a regular basis in recent years is Michael Schumacher.

Brake pedal feel won't be so critical to Hamilton's style as Alonso's. We saw this latter point very clearly in the high-braking demands of Bahrain, where Fernando struggled badly because of lack of feel from the hard compound brakes that were necessary. But Lewis didn't. There are fewer things generally to faze Hamilton, whether that be braking feel, lack of grip or a briefly locked left-rear into Ste Devote.

So he didn't opt for the escape road. Instinctively he just decided to go with it, because he has that gift of keeping forward momentum that Brundle talked about. But this was a little too far. By the time he'd corrected the twitch, he'd not only missed the apex, but also the groove of the rubbered-in line. On the dust now, he was heading nowhere but for the tyre barrier - smack! The tub is damaged beyond immediate repair and he's not had a chance to try the supersofts on which he'll be qualifying on Saturday.

So the laws of physics do apply, even to Lewis Hamilton, despite him bending them this year to an outrageous degree.

But in that split second at Ste Devote all he bent was the car.

A few seconds later Alonso passes the yellow-flagged accident, still in good shape, still building up his data bank, still benefiting ever-more from the rubbering-in of the track.