Formula One: Lewis Hamilton poised to make title run-in a thriller

Comeback. Fightback. Rearguard action. Call it what you may, but in sport, whatever your preference, such spirit is the stuff of excitement at its most enjoyable.

And I believe we are on the brink of a thriller of a continuous spectacle, a one-man pocket of resistance to overwhelming odds in the determined shape of Lewis Hamilton in a Formula One finale of unbounded promise.

Hamilton is mentally gearing himself up for what would be a sensational title takeover from teammate Nico Rosberg, the German pacemaker who must be quaking in his size nines at his partner’s telling resurgence

Surrender is not in Hamilton’s vocabulary and, despite his 22-point deficit, I am convinced he is fired up to make the six-race run-in to the double-points finale in Abu Dhabi as memorable a countdown as there has ever been in grand prix racing.

Patriotism, I hasten to add, plays not a jot in my prediction, rather the fine ability the talented Briton has to recover from setbacks — and there have been plenty this season — with even more determination.

The odds, numerically, are stacked against him and it’s gloves off between the warring Mercedes twosome in what is turning into a humdinger of a championship.

I am not alone in my view that the 29-year-old could well recapture the world crown he held so brilliantly as a comparative newcomer in 2008.

Ahead of this Sunday’s night-time showdown in Singapore, McLaren’s Jenson Button reckons his former teammate Hamilton can clinch this campaign’s title because, he insists, he is Formula One’s fastest driver.

“Lewis is one of the quickest drivers ever to jump into a grand prix car,” says 2009 champion Button, at 34 the oldest and most experienced driver of them all, and with 15 career victories.

And he adds: “Lewis’s natural ability is probably better than anybody else in terms of outright speed.”

Hamilton, a winner six times this season to Rosberg’s four, is focused on a second victory, to go with his 2009 triumph, in the Singapore Grand Prix, round 14.

He promises: “I am well and truly in the hunt for the championship and that is giving me huge motivation.”

There are six races to go and he has vowed to give it his all to shorten and then obliterate his points lag in a bid to claim title number two.

Button added: “We know F1 isn’t all about natural ability — it is how you build on it, how your engineering skills shape up and how well you can work with hundreds of very clever people within the team to develop the car as the best on the grid.

“Lewis right now seems very comfortable in himself and that is not the Lewis I knew when we were teammates. He’s got his act together.

“He seems now to be taking his problems on the chin and I don’t know if that is just a front or if he feels confident that he can still come back from the problems he has had so far this season and fight for the World Championship. And I really believe he can.”

That makes two of us.

— The writer is a freelance motorsport journalist