There is at least one thing that Lewis Hamilton, McLaren’s new hope for the future, is getting right already. His Q&A session reported on the McLaren website is a classic of the F1 driver’s accepted style. He never puts a foot wrong and it’s all there – the confidence, the refusal to compare himself with his teammate, the guarded optimism.

Of course, it was bound to be so having been put out by the company public relations department. But Hamilton could do this kind of thing standing on his head, I’m sure – he’s a smart cookie. Altogether he looks the complete package, intelligent, talented and realistic. If Michael Schumacher has an heir to his performance in F1, Hamilton would be a likely candidate.

His times in testing, although not necessarily a pointer to race speed, indicate that he is already at home in the car and learning at a remarkable rate. To be putting in quick times so soon, Lewis has demonstrated that he can make the jump to F1 with ease – and many drivers fail to surmount this final hurdle to the top rank.

In his answer to the final question in the session, Hamilton puts his finger on the next big step:

Is Fernando a good teacher for you?
“It is great to be in the same team as him as I can learn from him. When I look at the data I am able to see where I am losing and where I can gain and I think when we go to tracks like Australia and Malaysia where I have not been before, with his experience it is going to make it a lot easier for me to learn the circuit.”

Learning new circuits is always a big barrier to a rookie’s success. While the old hands know all the quirks and tricks of each GP, the newcomer has to begin yet another learning curve to stay competitive. F1 drivers don’t become champion in their first year, no matter how talented they are, and this is one of the reasons – almost all of the tracks are new to them.

But Hamilton learns very quickly. If the car remains as good as it has looked in testing, it will be no surprise to see him win a GP or two in the coming season. And next year we could see a fascinating duel between the McLaren drivers. Remember Prost and Senna in the same team…?

Pitpass dot com has an interesting article about the sale of Donington Park to a consortium calling itself Donington Ventures Leisure Limited (DVLL). This leads to speculation that Donington, with its improved facilities, might mount a serious challenge to be the venue for future British GPs.

It takes me back to 1993, when Donington hosted the European GP. At the time, there were thoughts that the circuit was too small to put on a decent F1 race but events proved everyone wrong. Thanks to the weather and the genius of Ayrton Senna, the race turned out to be one of the all time greats.

As a result, we all have fond memories of Donington as a GP venue and this must surely aid DVLL in any move to steal the British GP from Silverstone. But the most telling aspect will inevitably be facilities. Pitpass seems to think that Silverstone will never be able to compete in this area and they may have a point. The BRDC, owners of Silverstone, just don’t have the money to build luxury facilities like those on offer in the tiger economies of Asia.

Things have come a long way from the days of rickety toilets and greasy food served from a caravan. The average race goer expects to be cosseted with the latest advances in hygienic amenities; or so we are led to believe. And the standards for acceptance as one of Bernie’s elite circuits just keep going up and up, while the tracks become ever more standardized in the quest for safety. It’s a brave (and boring) new world.

It is not that I think Donington should not have a GP; more that I would be sad to see Silverstone go. Apart from being a good circuit, it has history on its side and that means atmosphere. Which wasn’t enough to save Brands Hatch, of course, and many other famous circuits on the continent. Surely it is about time that more factors than facilities were taken into account in this business of selecting GP venues. If the FIA is so concerned about entertainment value, it might be an idea for atmosphere and setting to be considered as well as fancy grandstands and ablution blocks.

The greatness of the Nordschleife was not just the length and variation of the circuit – it was also the brooding forest that surrounded the circuit and gave it atmosphere. Monaco survives only because its setting is so steeped in history that its demise is unthinkable. And we all react with horror to the thought that Spa might be taken from us yet again. Circuits become part of our memories, reminders of great races we have witnessed, places that speak of famous names and events, deeds of courage and superhuman skill.

Silverstone is not one of the most atmospheric circuits yet it has its share of memories. It remains one of the GPs that we look forward to, not just for the renewal of competition but also because it has that aura of tradition.

It seems that as time goes on, new car launches become less and less hyped; Spyker unveiled theirs today amidst very little fanfare. The team is being careful in claims for the future, too, and are aiming to be in a position to win races in another five years’ time. That is refreshingly realistic.

I am starting to like this team a lot. Admittedly, that has something to do with their being Dutch and going with the national color, orange, for the car, but they also get on with the business at hand without making wild claims for the future. Colin Kolles is shouting the odds a bit over Toro Rosso’s and Super Aguri’s customer cars, but that is understandable, given the fact that Spyker are likely to suffer more than any other team if TR and SA make spectacular performance gains in the coming season. Nobody wants to finish last, after all.

In Albers and Sutil, the team has a good driver pairing as well. Albers is experienced and quick, Sutil potentially a star. If the car is as good as it looks, these two could cause some upsets in midfield. And the Ferrari engine was a pretty good choice, too.

Spyker have gone for development rather than innovation and the F8-VII is a fair example of standard thinking in F1 today. At this stage, that is the right way to go – once they have established a solid base of sound design and reliability, then will come the time for experimentation to gain a performance advantage.

Mike Gascoyne seems much happier with Spyker and his influence will be felt increasingly as the year rolls on, no doubt. It would not surprise me if the Spyker cars were beginning to get amongst the midfield runners by the time the revised car debuts, perhaps at the Turkish GP.

In fact, it’s just as hard to see who will make up the tail end of the grid in the 2007 season as it is to predict the winner. Everyone has a good engine now, all the chassis will be reasonably good (if TR and SA get their way), and all the drivers are competent. So who will be running last for most of the races?

I don’t know but, if I were David Coulthard or Mark Webber, I’d be pushing hard to get that RB3 sorted out quickly now…

Some things make no sense to me. While Kimi Raikkonen is telling us how like a happy family the Ferrari team is, technical manager Nigel Stepney reveals to Autosport that he’s dissatisfied with recent personnel changes and wants to take a break until Ross Brawn returns.

Ignoring the fact that this is more evidence of trouble brewing at Ferrari, it still seems a strange thing for Stepney to go public on such matters. Presumably he has told his employers how he feels but, since he talks only of wanting to take a sabbatical rather than announcing a done deal, it must be that he still awaits an answer from them. Is this Stepney’s way of getting his bosses to make a quick decision?

The whole interview is very revealing of Ferrari’s internal politics. From what Stepney says about wanting to move his career forward, it is clear that he was hoping to be promoted into a position that someone else has taken instead. To have waited until now to reveal his thoughts, weeks after the changes were made, Stepney must have tried the new arrangement and decided that he cannot work with it.

Ross Brawn’s return is held up as the solution to the problem, with Stepney expecting that he would move up to a senior role at that time. But the fact that he cannot grit his teeth and bear it for a year means that things must be very bad for him indeed. Which doesn’t sound like a happy family to me.

Perhaps he has realized that there is no guarantee that Brawn will become team principal when he returns. By the end of this year, the team will be very different from the one Brawn left and he may not be as welcome to some as everyone assumes. It’s only a guess but the changes made have a distinct “Italianization” feel to them. That must emanate from FIAT and would go with Montezemolo’s increasing interest in and influence over the team.

Even Stepney’s willingness to consider going to another team is odd if his hope is that things will improve when Brawn returns. If Stepney moves now, he can hardly expect to return to Ferrari at the end of the year; any team that employs him would want him for more than a year and it is unlikely that Ferrari would welcome him back with open arms after such a desertion.

Maybe I am reading too much into all this. Perhaps everything has already been agreed and this interview is merely preparation for an announcement. But, if so, it still looks like a weird way to go about things, you must admit.