Revitalised Lewis Hamilton is feeling like the new kid on the grid for his mission in Melbourne

THE Brit has learned from last year's lapses.

Lewis Hamilton

THE best place to interview Lewis Hamilton is in his office. That is a 180mph projectile where we sit almost rubbing shoulders as he gets on with his day job while I watch, robbed of the desire to converse by the roaring power of the 500 horses behind us.

At a time such as this, Hamilton is the easiest man on the planet to understand because he is doing what he loves most and has been doing since he was a child - driving a car very fast and very close to limits beyond mere mortals.

Look at his eyes and there is no blinking, just clear focus on the track ahead as his hands, almost as delicate as a piano player's, flick the steering wheel left and right in perfect timing with the thunderous beat of McLaren's new racing car.

"I still have the excitement as when I first started racing," he says after the race suits are stripped off and the safety helmets stowed away. "Even today, messing around, I was like a kid with a new toy. I can't wait to get out."

That clear focus on the track ahead was what was missing from the 2011 version of Lewis Hamilton, when late nights and transatlantic flights to repair a broken heart diverted him from his first love of Formula One racing.

Perhaps the Melbourne police are less enthusiastic about Hamilton's urgency to get to the city for the first grand prix of the new season, which is on tomorrow. But this is the new, improved Hamilton, not the one unwisely caught "hooning" - smoking the tyres of his hire car - in the street a couple of years ago by the local constabulary, and not the moody, miserable one that ground out last season.

The Briton's troubles appear to be solved: he is back happily with Nicole Scherzinger, his pop star girlfriend, after what was clearly a turbulent break-up last year, and has ditched a lonely apartment in Zurich for Monaco. The cynical might say Hamilton is dodging new tax rules in Switzerland; the more sympathetic might think that the chance to be surrounded by fellow drivers in the principality will give Hamilton a support network he has lacked since he split from Anthony, his father, as his manager.

He moved in only a fortnight ago and there are boxes still to unpack, but they will have to wait because Hamilton has rediscovered his urgency and the yearning to drive. It was evident at pre-season testing, where he was happy to drive 100 laps and more in a day and keep going if he had been given the chance. And he has put himself on a diet to lose a quick two kilos before the start of the season. "In the tests I wanted to do more and more laps but we ran out of time," he said. "I am looking forward to getting out in Australia."

There are many who believe that Hamilton simply wears his heart - and sometimes his brain - on his sleeve, picking daring moves that have no hope of coming off, which is why he landed himself in so much trouble with the stewards and his rivals last year, regularly getting penalties, while his feud with Felipe Massa seemed never-ending.

Watching him flick the McLaren MP4-12C GT3 racing car around the Top Gear track at Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey, it was difficult to fathom how Hamilton's pinpoint accuracy could have gone so awry as he blundered through the 2011 World Championship. But he had a simple answer: "I had a lot going on in my life and if you aren't thinking clearly, your decisions are overshadowed."

Hamilton could not leave the catalogue of errors behind with the end of last season, though, and asked his team to provide him with every bit of information they could give him on the races in which he messed up. Thoughtful and introspective, he spent the winter looking for where it all went wrong. "I analysed things, I watched some of the races, went through race traces and different graphs to try to see where my strengths were and where I was strong and where I could improve," he said. "There were definitely a few where I could improve, but that it is about being in the right place at the right time."

One particular experience hurt. At the Malaysian Grand Prix, he flat-spotted a tyre that forced him to change for a set that turned out to be the wrong choice. He sank to seventh place and, in a desperate attempt to keep Fernando Alonso's Ferrari at bay, picked up one of his many penalties. "It is trying to avoid those pitfalls," Hamilton said. "It is a case of being more switched on, more aware of your surroundings, and I hope that is where I am."

It is easy still to think of Hamilton as the newcomer after his precocious entrance, almost winning the title in his first year and then becoming champion in his second, in 2008. But this is his sixth season and he was not catapulted into Formula One as a teenager, like Jenson Button, his teammate.

He is 27 now and feels that he has been through the mill. He is also realistic enough to know that the spotlight will focus on him even if things are beyond his control. Without a fast car, as he had in his championship year, he can do no more than his best.

"People forget the journey into Formula One when I had plenty of ups and downs and had to learn to lose and have bad races," Hamilton said. "But it is different in Formula One when you are stuck in front of millions of people and comments are made. I am pretty sure that if the car had been the same last year as in 2007 and 2008, we would see a different person sitting here.

"I would love to be sitting here with three world championships under my belt but it isn't the case. I don't regret what has happened or the experiences I have had. I think I am better for it so, hopefully, that will help for the future."

That future starts tomorrow as Formula One cranks up and drivers prepare to turn the wheels of their new cars in anger for the first time - although, for Hamilton, 2011 has left its bruises and he remains cautious.

"I hope it's a new phase, but the only way I will know will be from the results - and I can't predict what will happen," he said.

"Every year, you feel as though you have prepared, but you get to the first race and lots of things happen. I will take every race as it comes, keep my head screwed on and my feet on the ground for the whole year."

The Times