Highlights

Hamilton will not let success go to his head

(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-03-20 08:41

Lewis Hamilton will not let success go to his head after a sensational Formula One debut with McLaren in Australia on Sunday.

The Briton's third place in the season-opening race, after overtaking double world champion and team mate Fernando Alonso at the first corner and leading for four laps, was deemed by some to be the most impressive ever debut by a rookie.

"He's the best thing I've seen in Formula One since I came into it in the 1950s," said compatriot Stirling Moss, the greatest driver never to win the championship, who singled out the 22-year-old's humility and lack of arrogance as leading qualities.

Others focused on the first 10 seconds of the race, when Hamilton reacted instinctively to the first-corner stampede by jinking sideways and slipping past Alonso on the outside.

That manoeuvre -- audacious, supremely confident and full of natural talent -- clearly set out his credentials.

Hamilton had said before the race that he knew his place at McLaren and on Sunday's evidence, it will be up there fighting for victory.

Yet, with the champagne still wet on his overalls, there was no boasting or bravado.

Hamilton's proud father Anthony, a former railway employee whose father emigrated from Granada to work on the London underground in the 1950s, said he would make sure the youngster stayed that way.

Asked what his son had said to him immediately after the race, he told a scrum of reporters: "He just laughed. And that laugh was 'We know we can do it'."

"He's still a feet-on-the-ground kid and he will remain that way, as long as I've got something to do with it.

"I don't want Lewis to lose focus on the job. The job is motor racing, it's taken us 13 years to get here and that's all he'll ever think about, nothing else," he said.

"The thing is, that's what makes him superb and I'll do everything to defend that."

Hamilton senior also paid tribute to McLaren boss Ron Dennis, who has guided the career of Formula One's first black driver for the best part of a decade after meeting him at an awards ceremony.

Hamilton, then beginning his karting career, had walked up to the team boss, looked him directly in the eye and told him that he wanted to drive one of his cars one day.

"Ron's a really, really happy man. I think this is probably one of the happiest and proudest days of his life for a long, long time," he said.

"All credit to Ron, how the hell do you pick up a 13-year-old kid, all those years ago, and say 'I can see something in you'. I can see it because I'm his dad, but how did Ron see it?

"The man's got a super eye, hasn't he?"