MOTOR SPORT:It's hard to deny. Once you clamber past the hyperbole, the boiling hysteria and the rampaging headlines, the truth is this really is phenomenal.

Lewis Hamilton - Formula One championship leader and for the first time, in his sixth race, a grand prix winner.

In Montreal yesterday, Hamilton did the unbelievable. In a race in which there were horrendous smashes, unpredictable battles, romantic finishes and more safety-car interventions than there have been seen all season, the 22-year-old rookie kept his nerve, kept his nose clean and won to finish a progression that has seen him better his race positions nearly every time he has started.

In Australia he was fourth, in Malaysia he climbed to second. He repeated that three times and yesterday completed the set with his first victory.

And it was deceptively simple. Hamilton claimed pole on Saturday in a straight duel with team-mate and arch-rival Fernando Alonso. The Spaniard made a mistake and lost three-tenths on his final run and Hamilton was there.

His first pole position.

There was the suspicion Alonso, the senior partner, might be running a little more heavily fuelled. Surely this was the way McLaren, after the furore they had set off with some strategic shuffling in Monaco, would get the defending champion past the rookie. Do it in the pit stops.

But it never happened. Alonso was similarly fuelled, the pair stopping within a couple of laps of each other in the first phase.

By then, though, Hamilton was an awesome 16 seconds ahead of his team-mate. Alonso's race was already run.

The Spaniard had made an uncharacteristic mistake into the first turn, running wide over the dirt and losing his second place to the BMW-Sauber of Nick Heidfeld. It was the first of many for the Spaniard on a day when his normal reserves of determination evaporated in a haze of indecision and overdriving errors.

Hamilton profited, others too.

After that it should have been, to spin a bad pun, academic for Hamilton. But there was chaos everywhere in this race. The worst arrived on lap 27 when BM's Robert Kubica collided with a rival on the approach to the hairpin and flew off track.

His car struck the wall, the front end exploding into showers of debris. The impact spun him through the air back across track and into the barrier on the other side, leaving the Pole apparently unconscious in the wreckage. It had the hallmarks of a serious accident. Out came the safety car and Hamilton's lead was gone.

As Kubica was flown to hospital, the race ground on, Hamilton looking for a while in danger. But there was none.

Heidfeld, driving superbly in his own BMW, could do nothing against the McLaren's pace. And likewise Alonso could do nothing about the BMW's.

The Ferraris of Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen too were out of the equation. During the safety-car period, Massa inadvertently pitted and exited the pitlane while the red light indicated it to be closed. He was black flagged.

The same fate befell Renault's Giancarlo Fisichella.

It left Hamilton a clear track to the chequered flag. Clear save for the debris from the car belonging to Kubica - reported to be stable but with a broken leg - Toro Rosso's Scott Speed and Vitantonio Liuzzi and Spyker's Adrian Sutil. All brought the safety car out.

Hamilton, though, was unfazed. But Alonso slipped back, first being caught by Williams's Alex Wurz then by Heikki Kovalainen of Renault. It was a stunning performance from the luckless Finn, who had started last.

The romance, though, belonged to Super Aguri. Takuma Sato, in another dazzling effort, raced to seventh, saw Alonso ahead and muscled past the champion to claim three points. The smallest team on the block outracing and outdriving the biggest and the champion.

"I'm just having a fantastic day," Hamilton said. "This is history. The last few laps I was just counting them down. I could see the board and I am the kind of guy to push until the end, and if you make one mistake you are on the marbles and in the wall. So I just wanted to enjoy it.

"I have to dedicate this one to my dad because without him it wouldn't all be possible."