Of the major stories to come out of 2007, the emergence of British sensation Lewis Hamilton has to be among the most significant.
And though the hype surrounding the McLaren rookie became deafening as the season climaxed, Martin Brundle explains why Hamilton lived up to those expectations absolutely, and why he is the real deal.
When you look at Lewis Hamilton's season as a whole, it didn't involve luck. The impact he made as a driver was purely down to his speed, skill, car control, preparation and confidence.
As far I am concerned he was worth all of the hype he was subjected to in 2007.
We made a big deal about Lewis this year on the F1-ITV show and I don’t feel the need to apologise for that. The audiences doubled some days because of him so people voted with their remote control. As a rookie he had six pole positions, four victories and lead the championship for over four months. Sure his car was good, but so were the opposition.
Lewis did an extraordinary job, far better than anyone could have imagined with the possible exception of himself and his dad.
Certainly McLaren didn't expect him to go that well.
He looked good straight away in Melbourne. Walking around the track during first practice you could see he was on it.
The car was moving about and he confidently predicted and corrected its direction change. That was a trademark of his driving style.
He seems to enjoy the car being alive.
Whenever we watched Lewis from on-board or from the side of a racetrack, there was just an extraordinary amount of movement and car control.
A few times I grimaced when he was on a qualifying lap and thought, 'he is not going to have a good sector time', but he did.
He reminds me of Michael Schumacher in that respect.
Another aspect of Hamilton's driving that stood out was his supreme overtaking, and the confidence with which he executed the moves.
That ability to brake late and have a feel for the grip without locking a tyre and skidding into the person you are trying to pass, or run wide, is a gift.
That skill will pay dividends without the benefit of traction control and more specifically the ‘engine braking’ electronic rear-end stabilising toys in 2008.
Lewis's move on Kimi Raikkonen at Monza was one sensational example.
His pass on Giancarlo Fisichella at the Nurburgring was another.
To do that with two wheels on wet grass, on the fastest part of the racetrack, was brave.
One of the things that impressed me most about Lewis was how he announced himself straight away, as all the great drivers do, down into Turn One at Melbourne.
And, but for fuel strategy he would have beaten his team-mate, double-world champion Fernando Alonso, on his Formula 1 debut.
You could argue that was one of the numerous significant moments that lost him the championship.
I remember writing at the time that Hamilton could probably just about cope with that disappointment but it wouldn't be long before podiums weren't enough for him.
He made another amazing start in Malaysia, nailing both Ferraris at the first corner, and very quickly Hamilton established himself as a natural consistent front-runner, which given his experience level was quite extraordinary.
Particularly when you consider the level of maturity he brought into his game, on and off the track.
By the time he got to Monaco he was expecting to win races and you sensed he was disappointed when he didn't win that particular race.
That was the moment when Lewis flung Ron Dennis's hand from his shoulder and went from being eternally-grateful protégé to fully-flegded grand prix driver fighting his own corner.
I didn't agree with Lewis's view that he deserved to win that race though. It was his own error that cost him track position when he crashed in practice and Alonso won Monte Carlo fair and square in my mind.
When Hamilton did start winning he was sensational.
The two victories he scored in North America were exceptional.
They may have looked easy, but those sort of races, where you build a lead and it gets eroded by the Safety Car, are soul-destroying as I know well from Le Mans.
In Montreal, the way he kept his head at the front of a pack on a track that was treacherous, while a lot of older and wiser hands were making mistakes, was another sign of his mental strength.
And Robert Kubica's massive accident must have affected him – none of the drivers could have failed to have been moved by the pile of bits on the side of the road…
By a country mile though, his Hamilton's win in Fuji was his greatest achievement so far in my book.
You can't begin to imagine how hard it is to drive in those conditions with the virtual total lack of visibility and the lengthy Safety Car period followed by standing water. Okay he was out in front but he still had to pass cars later on and he had the pressure of the title fight to distract him. Even on the pit straight he had a precise line.
What's more is that Lewis's win in Japan came off the back of a lean streak. Remember that he had been beaten badly at Monza and Spa and he was under pressure to deliver.
And the race at Silverstone must be one of the low points.
Several times this season I wondered from where he drew the experience to handle the situations that were thrown at him.
Take his performances in front of the media. He handled them with confidence and staked his case clearly.
Dennis described him as confident but devoid of all arrogance.
I think Lewis hit the sweet point somewhere between the two, and that's how it should be. To win in F1 you have to be confident, you have to have a bit of an ego and supreme confidence.
Lewis would walk into the paddock on a Thursday afternoon with an uninvited entourage and a gleam like a prize fighter, and that was a message to his competitors.
What was admirable was how he achieved that without his feet apparently leaving the ground.
But while he performed above all expectations, he is not without room for improvement.
There was a phase of races where he appeared to go backwards after the first stop, or when the team went on to option tyres. Silverstone and Brazil were good examples of this.
I don't know why. It is not as if he lost his talent half way through a race and he clearly doesn't have a concentration problem because of those amazing victories I've mentioned.
Perhaps he was still learning about car set-up.
There were also times when he was over-confident.
We saw it twice this year and unquestionably these occasions cost him the world championship.
The first was the Nurburgring, where it bordered on showing off.
By the hand of god Hamilton found himself back on the racetrack, having spun off in the rain along with many other drivers. That wasn't really his fault, just as it wasn't when he started down the grid because of his loose wheel and crash in qualifying.
By the same token he was lucky to get back on the track and subsequently get waved through as the only lapped car behind the Safety Car.
But then, instead of staying on a warm set of inters, quickly catching a pack about to restart on cold inters, he went for dry tyres on a track that had recently been red-flagged because it was too dangerous on the inters!
If he'd have stayed on those warm inters he would have had the rest of them for breakfast and probably won the race. He certainly wouldn’t have finished ninth and out of the points.
There are days when you have got to play the percentages if you want to win those championships.
Michael did it beautifully; he took the wins and the glory when they were on offer and maximised the points when they weren't.
Schumacher always came through the field and made something out of nothing. We have yet to see Lewis really do that in F1.
Then of course there is China.
I'm pretty sure Hamilton and McLaren wanted to take the championship with a win and it clouded their judgement.
At that time they were also covering themselves off against Alonso, because that relationship had completely broken down. You can't help but think that instead of looking at his tyres and lap times and making rational decisions, they were looking at weather maps and when Alonso might be coming in.
The key thing a lot of people forget is that while Hamilton scampered off at the front, disappeared and wore out his tyres, Alonso and Raikkonen ran comfortably longer on the same rubber.
They looked after their tyres better because they were more experienced.
I did feel sorry for him in that gravel trap though. Where else on the calendar is there a gravel trap on the entry to the pits?
Why is it even there? Gravel traps are being replaced all around the world with high-grip asphalt because it's safer and Lewis managed to go off on the only one of its kind! It was one of those twists of fate that will live with him forever.
Can Hamilton be as good as Schumacher in time? That will take some doing won't it?
What bothers me is that the expectations are now so high.
It’s possible he won't have as good a year next year. The pressures and expectation are massive. Everybody wants a piece of him and he is no longer just a British racing driver but an international sporting icon.
Equally, how good will the new McLaren be? There has been a lot of disruption in Woking with all the politics of the last few months. That can't have helped their development process.
McLaren is a big organisation with a lot of clever people so I'm not for one minute suggesting it won't be up to it, but the team and Lewis must have had a lot of distractions since the saga first broke at the British Grand Prix back in July.
One thing I have learned over the last 35 years of motorsport is that you can never underestimate anybody.
Your Kovalainens, Kubicas, Rosbergs… all of Lewis's generation are extremely good, and sooner or later there will be another kid that comes along that has them all looking over their shoulder. That's the way it is, thankfully.
Do I expect him to be a multiple Formula 1 world champion? Yes of course I do. He is a bright boy, he is fit, he is fearless and he has got that rare sixth sense for driving a Formula 1 car and knowing how much grip there is likely to be before he turns in to a corner.