[Jeff Higgins]

It is very easy to drive with panache when one is driving a dominating car. It's easy, likewise, to "fall apart" when one is driving lesser car. Driving a car that you know to be superior adds a level of confidence lacking in one's opponents in lesser cars. Success breeds success.

I will forever wonder how things would have shaped up had Vettel left Red Bull for Mercedes. Mercedes were less than competitive then, and everyone was shocked to see Hamilton leave the very successful, competitive McLaren for the also-ran Mercedes. He saw something (someone) there that enticed him to move. Had he waited, had he decided to stick it out at McLaren, his career would have taken a far different path.

I said earlier that the F1 pyramid has become too steep and pointy. The car makes far, far too much of a difference in the championship we all care about - the drivers' championship. It remains, however, first and foremost a constructors' championship, which will always be its clearest delineation from all of the spec racing seen elsewhere. As such, the car and the team will continue to decide the drivers' champion. Hamilton is just lucky, or was foresightful enough, to have landed in the right seat. It could have been Vettel, it could have been Alonso, it could have been Raikonen - any of them would have dominated in a similar fashion.