STOP THE PRESS! After four races in 2007, rookie Lewis Hamilton leads the Formula 1 drivers championship.

Despite the hype surrounding his entry into Formula 1, no one could ever have imagined that he'd be leading the championship after the first few races of the year. He may not have won a race as yet, but his consistent performances have put him on the podium in every race thus far – ensuring his points lead over the other race winners.

In the past few months, we've speculated if he's simply been blessed with extraordinary luck, we've even speculated on whether the F1 cars of today are easy to drive. Clearly both theories have been way off target. The fact of the matter is that he's an incredible talent with an exceptionally mature head on his shoulders – a great combination to say the least.

Never before has a driver's debut been this stunning – made even better by the fact that he's been able to achieve better results than his double world champion teammate, Alonso. You can only hope that the pressure to continually perform at this level doesn't get the better of him, and his rookie mistake (which is inevitable if you're human), if and when it does happen, doesn't take the wind out of his sails. At the moment, he's clearly got the upper hand in his most important battle – the one with his teammate.

Hamilton's not in the clear just yet however, in addition to Alonso hunting him down, he'll also have to deal with the Ferrari's, which still seem to have a small advantage – at least in terms of pace, if not reliability. The Ferrari of Massa ran away from the McLaren of Hamilton to become just a speck in the horizon over the course of the Spanish Grand Prix – clearly indicating that they still have better race pace. In qualifying however, a day before the race, it was a lot closer between the two top teams. Massa barely snatched pole position from Alonso on his last qualifying run by a mere three hundredths of a second.

With the Ferrari's and McLaren's splitting the two front rows of the grid, as has become commonplace this year, it set up an exciting first corner battle. The McLaren's seem to be able to get off the line better than the Ferrari's, and both drivers were able to get a good run into the first corner.

Alonso tried what seemed like an overly ambitious move in front of his home crowd, attempting to overtake Massa around the outside of the first corner – perhaps hoping that the collective will of over a hundred thousand Spanish spectators would be able to pull him though into the lead. Unfortunately for him, Massa held his ground and they touched as Alonso turned into the corner, hoping to find the apex instead. Needless to say, the two drivers had a difference of opinion about the incident afterwards, which left Massa in control of the race and Alonso in fourth place with a slightly ailing racecar.

Ferrari suffered disappointment, however, in the form of a mechanical failure, as Kimi Raikkonen retired early in the race. Even though Ferrari's reliability has been practically bullet proof recently, it doesn't come as a surprise that one of the Ferrari's or McLaren's retired with mechanical failure in Spain – simply because the pace of development since the last race in Bahrain has been spectacular. Even though, at four weeks, the break was a long one, McLaren developed and ran a completely new, and very radical, front wing design, while Ferrari claim to have found about half second a lap. With that kind of development in such a short span of time, it's not entirely surprising when something fails. Nevertheless, Kimi's retirement was a shame, as it denied us the chance of seeing an interesting battle that would undoubtedly have developed between him and Hamilton for second place.