Moss and Stewart on Hamilton

British F1 superheroes Stirling Moss and Jackie Stewart tell PAUL FEARNLEY why Lewis Hamilton is now their equal

Stirling Moss was the young sensation, 'The underdog doing his utmost to win a GP in a British car'. Jackie Stewart was Jim Clark's 'Scottish speed twin. Robin to his Batman'. Ah, we Press love a hook, crave a new angle and pray for the next wonder kid.

Enter Lewis Carl Hamilton: the looks, the smile, the chat, the charm and - no emperor's clothes here, please - the skin colour. The only thing missing, as far as the scribblers were concerned, was an overly aggressive, mouthy dad living vicariously through his son's achievements.

Still, a super-supportive, well-adjusted father holding down three jobs in order to keep his son's dream alive isn't bad fodder for a gushing paragraph or five.

So, when Hamilton finally got behind the wheel of a McLaren, it wasn't just Woking holding its breath - Wapping was, too...

Thank God, he's brilliant. Keep the presses running. And quick, plant some more trees.

That's well and good for those on the outside staring in, but how does it look and feel from within: the expectations, the pressures, the clamour and the glamour? Moss and Stewart know. They were 25 and 26 respectively when they took their first world championship GP wins; Hamilton is 22. The three eras involved vary greatly, but some things never change - and the parallels are numerous and strong.

Moss's maiden win - the 1955 British GP at Aintree - was scored in a silver car powered by a Mercedes eight-cylinder engine. His team-mate was a Spanish-speaking (then) two-times world champion: Juan Fangio. Stewart had a world champion team-mate, too, although Graham Hill had just one title to his name when the Scottish tyro won the 1965 Italian GP at Monza.

Stewart was driving for BRM, a rigorously structured, very proper, conservative team with a distinct ethos and methodology. It wasn't king of the F1 castle - Lotus was the Jean Todt-run Ferrari of the 1960s - but it presented him with a car with race-winning potential. For BRM then, read McLaren now.

Moss and Stewart ended up transcending their sport by being as brilliant off the track as on. Both are PR savvy, quick-witted and businesslike, and they became their own brands, rock solid and seared into the public consciousness. Hamilton is following the same path and it's hard to envisage him stumbling from it.

"It takes many years to become a major player. But there's no question that Lewis is going to be a big, big star. Perhaps he will be fast-tracked in this respect, too. There is, unsurprisingly, a strong streak of McLaren culture in him - but he's going to be much, much bigger than that."

"I'm flattered people are comparing me with Lewis. His manners, his attitude - he seems to be from a different era. Perhaps he's the new era. He has an inner confidence and genuinely seems to be enjoying the experience. When Jacques Villeneuve and Juan Montoya arrived in Formula 1 we all got excited. They didn't seem to care about Michael Schumacher's reputation and took him on. But they soon wore off. Neither had the charm of Lewis. There's something about him..."

"Without fear of contradiction, I can say that he's the best-prepared driver to enter F1. What other driver could recite the FIA Yellow Book back at you? Racing drivers have a habit of being lethargic about everything bar seat-of-the-pants driving. Not Lewis. He's the first of a new generation. Very few young drivers get the opportunity to enter F1 with a top team.

"Joining McLaren has rocket-shipped Lewis to prominence, and he has dealt with this unusual experience remarkably well. A real weakness within F1 is that hardly any drivers, no matter their age or experience, believe they need help or coaching. Lewis is different. He's been coached all the way up the ladder. And he's taken it all on board."

"Karting didn't exist in my day. We had the 500s. The big problem was that you had to wait until you were 17 to race one. So, at the age I was taking my first steps, Lewis had already proved his brilliance at an international level in karting. The benefit I had, though, is that I drove all different types of car. That's how I learned.

"For instance, my big breakthrough came in a Jaguar XK120 sports car. Nobody would give me a car to contest the 1950 TT at Dundrod. They thought I was going too fast for my experience. When I say 'they' I mean the people who mattered within the car companies. The people who knew me personally had a different attitude.

"Tommy Wisdom, a press man, said, 'Why don't you drive my Jaguar?' I jumped at it, and won - on the eve of my 21st birthday. I'd proved I was ready. I felt exactly the same way about Lewis. There were some who thought he shouldn't be thrown in at the deep end, but I thought that was crap. If you're good enough, you're old enough. He looked ripe for F1. And he's proved it."

"Lewis is remarkable for someone with so little F1 experience. Already we are predicting what will happen in his future and are just as confident about how he will approach it and cope with it. He's made a big impression very quickly. Yes, he's been coached, but he's intuitive, too. You could see that from the first corner in Melbourne."

"It was obvious immediately. In any era there are only four or five drivers with a realistic chance of winning - and Lewis became one of them straight away. I was a racer. And I think he's one, too. It's important to get that across: he's not just fast. We saw that with some of his overtaking manoeuvres in GP2.

"People said he wouldn't be able to do that in F1 - but he has. He's just doing his own thing. I'm sure he's still learning, but, before you know what's happened, he's established himself. He's got the extra bit that a lot of similarly fast drivers never have.

"I like to think I had it: I wanted to win and I thought I'd have a go. Alonso's got it. He's a hell of a good driver, but now he's got a staggeringly fast number two he must be concerned that he's going to lose his place. That's a very ordinary thing to think."

"Alonso is dealing with the situation very well. He's got a very mature head on his shoulders. He's still the world's best driver. But I'm damn sure Lewis's performances have perked him up."

"To have a world champion as a team-mate was fantastic. I knew I was going to learn an enormous amount because of the quality of expertise around me. Yes, Mercedes was a high-profile drive, but I couldn't see any negatives. I guess Lewis felt the same about the McLaren drive. I showed that I could beat Fangio in sportscars, but in F1, the most demanding form of racing, he was a bit quicker than me. And I was happy to follow him. It was a masterclass."

"Graham [Hill] was fantastic. Can you imagine having a young upstart going quicker than you? That must have been very difficult to accept as a mature GP driver. I was very sensitive to that. But he was brilliant with me. I haven't got a bad word to say about him. Indeed, I understudied him - and Jim Clark and Jo Bonnier.

"Jo was a very polished, sophisticated man who'd been well brought up. Graham was one of the best after-dinner speakers, always with the right joke at the right time. And nobody had a cross word to say about Jimmy. I was very lucky to have several good examples to emulate. I also worked with Walter Hayes [of Ford], the ultimate in being able to do the right thing at the right time. These guys adopted me. And I wanted to be adopted. I wanted to learn. Lewis is the same."

"Fangio seemed genuinely happy for me to be there. He was the teacher. There was no jealousy. I had enormous respect for him and I think he respected me. Even now I don't know if he let me win that British GP. I think he felt it was my home race and that it was right that I should win. It was a big occasion, for sure, but you have to remember that sportscar racing was at that time viewed as the equal of F1.

"To win a Mille Miglia or a Targa Florio [Moss won both that year] was as good as winning a GP. There were six or seven GPs each season, but you were doing 40 races a year, mostly against the same drivers in the same cars. It sounds crazy now, but a race like the Daily Express race at Silverstone was no less important to the teams and drivers than the British GP. In fact, it was probably more important - there was certainly more money at stake."

"I far exceeded my own expectations in 1965. I didn't think I was in that league. But I won a heat [from the back of the grid] in my first F1 race [the 1964 Rand GP at Kyalami, for Lotus]. Then I set pole and joint fastest lap [in a BRM] in the Sunday Mirror Trophy at Goodwood, and won the International Trophy at Silverstone.

"I finished second three times to Jimmy [Belgium, France and Holland] - and I'd arrived. It had happened so quickly. [Stewart had only been racing seriously since 1963 and had just one year's experience of single-seaters.]

"We got bigger crowds at races then than now, and the live audience could get to you, too. Now they wanted my autograph, wanted to take my photo. And there was a large media corps. Helen [Jackie's wife] kept my scrapbooks. They soon filled up."

"I was very lucky with the press in that there was no other new star immediately after the war. The other people racing had all been around pre-war. So what are you going to write about: the same old faces or some 17-year-old? And because I was a British driver trying to win a GP in a British car [1951-53], I got a lot of positive coverage.

"My career lasted 525 races over 15 years - and yet I've got 92 scrapbooks. And what people don't realise is that motor racing in the 1950s never appeared on the back pages of the newspapers. They were reserved for football, cricket and golf. Motor racing was always on the front page - if somebody had been killed - or page three."

"I was big news. But Jim Clark was always there to counsel me, and there was nobody better at bringing you back down to Earth than Ken Tyrrell, for whom I was driving in F2. But it was Ken who kept telling me I was going to win a GP that year.

"I'd say, 'Och, I don't know'. I've never understood drivers who come in and say they're going to win this and that. To win is a big deal and should be treated as such. So, when I did win at Monza - you know what the fans are like there - it was a lovely feeling. I'm sure it was the same for Lewis. He should savour it - there's only one first win."

"My 1950 TT win certainly gave me a fillip. That race was at a difficult track, it was pouring with rain and the car had hardly any brakes. My confidence stemmed from the bravado of youth, but I had to show some maturity just to get to the finish.

"I drove to my limit, and that proved good enough. That cemented my confidence: I could be quick and safe. I think Lewis is pushing very hard, but there have been no mistakes in qualifying or the races, so I'm guessing he has very high limits. He's impressively mature, too. His win will change some things, but I don't expect it to increase the pressure on him. Mine didn't. I had always been out there doing everything I could to win."

"The first win does alter things, but Lewis has the mind-management to deal with that. He's about to step into an even brighter spotlight. It can be dazzling, but I expect him to stay focused. It helped me that I'd been successful at another sport: shooting.

"I won all the majors bar the Olympics, and that taught me you could be beaten, that winning was not something you could take for granted. Lewis has his feet on the ground. He's so calm and collected. Last December he came with me and [Jackie's son] Paul to the Springfield Club in Hackney, and he was so popular with the kids.

"Every creed, every colour, they all thought he was cool. Without lecturing them, he was able to show them that if you behave properly, conduct yourself properly and try to achieve, you too can become Lewis Hamilton."

"Lewis is just an enjoyable person - the biggest breath of fresh air in the 60 years I've been connected to the sport."

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- The Autosport.com Team

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