It’s tempting to suggest that Lewis Hamilton has rediscovered his mojo. But that’s to do him a grave injustice. After all, it’s not as if he’s been sandbagging for the last two seasons. Rather more that Mercedes have failed to provide him with a competitive car capable of challenging Max Verstappen’s Red Bull.

If you need an illustration of just how dominant Verstappen’s machinery has been since he won his first World Championship so controversially in Abu Dhabi in 2021, here’s a statistic. Since the start of the 2022 season the Dutch prodigy has won 31 races. That’s the total that Nigel Mansell, himself no slouch at the wheel, won in his entire career in Formula One, which began in 1980 and ended in 1995 (with a year out in 1993).