If playing Sampras was so suffocating for his adversaries, imagine what it was like for the audience

final and how well we played. I remember the way we did it’.”

This, ultimately, is the difference between Sampras and Roger Federer. Where Sampras’s seven glories at Wimbledon recede ever deeper into memory, Federer’s eight remain somehow indelible acts of rapture.

Hamilton grew up wanting to idolise Ayrton Senna, who routinely tops most fan polls on F1’s greatest figure. There are few objective reasons why he should not now be heralded at least as Senna’s equal. Think of all the arguments advanced in Senna’s favour: his pole lap in Monaco in 1988, for example, when he eclipsed team-mate Alain Prost by 1.4 seconds. Hamilton evoked the same sense of wonder in Singapore just last month, obliterating his rivals in qualifying on a track where Mercedes were meant to have struggled. Yes, but what about Senna’s brilliance in the rain? Again, Hamilton’s record is more than a match, with his victory under torrential Silverstone downpours in 2008 his answer to the Brazilian’s sodden symphony at Donington 15 years earlier.

The curse for Hamilton is that he inhabits a profoundly different era of his sport. Where Senna, as his death would all too graphically illustrate, dealt with constant mortal danger, Hamilton and his peers benefit from an unprecedented degree of protection from serious injury.

Senna had arguably the greater public exposure, too: at the height of his battles with Prost, F1 was top of the Sunday lunchtime bill on terrestrial television. Next year, none of Hamilton’s races will be live on free-to-air in the UK.

Such factors, while beyond his control, ensure that his F1 dynasty is not appreciated as once it would have been.

Unlike other pre-eminent sports stars, Hamilton is also judged by the technology underneath him. Could Fernando Alonso have achieved similar glory in the same car? We will never know. What we can say, perhaps, is that while the Hamilton-mercedes combination is making history, it is yet to stir the blood. Mercedes, like Team Sky in cycling, are a fearsome corporate monolith, attracting admiration for their perfectionism but nothing like the same devotion as Ferrari, a brand so powerful in F1 that one employee burst into tears when he first donned his red overalls. While the familiar sight of Hamilton as a championin-waiting ought not to be taken for granted, he should be wary such familiarity can eventually breed contempt.