One-make junior single-seaters from the past couple of decades don’t seem particularly collectible. They hardly make the heart beat a little faster like, say, a mid-70s Formula Atlantic or F3. Then again, proof of who drove one changes everything. If a superstar in their formative years sat here, suddenly the mundane becomes desirable.

That’s surely the case with this, a Tatuus 2-litre Formula Renault from the early years of the new millennium. This ‘silver dream racer’ was run by long-time Formula Renault top dog Manor Motorsport – and a young lad with a big reputation from karting used it to win his first championship in car racing. Lewis Hamilton sat here in 2003, when he claimed 10 wins and seven pole positions from 15 races to become the Formula Renault UK champion in his second full season in the slicks-and-wings proving ground. That’s why Alex Thornton bought it, and why he commissioned single-seater specialist Nick Edginton – who openly admits cars from earlier eras are what really raises his pulse – to carry out a full and painstaking restoration.

Hamilton’s FRenault now rides again and was shaken down earlier this year at Donington Park, with experienced hand Lee Cunningham at the wheel. Just a Formula Renault? Not in this case. Given its place in the canon of one of the all-time greats, this is history.

Thornton runs a company called Pit Lane Spares, which sources and supplies parts for all sorts of ‘newly old’ modern-era historics. So he’s in the business, which is how he discovered this car. He’s also close in age to Hamilton – and a fan.

“Lewis is so inspiring, on so many levels,” says Thornton on why he bought the Tatuus. “I love the way he keeps going, no matter what. Look at his background. Working in the industry, I know how expensive it is to go through the ranks, and he hasn’t come from the same background as many. But he never saw it as a restriction. The same with his ethnicity, and now of his age. Also, above all, Lewis is an incredibly fair racer. He is an absolute professional in the way he conducts himself on and off the track and he really seems to understand the responsibility he carries as a role model to kids.”

“Lewis is so inspiring on many levels. I love the way he keeps going”

Thornton spotted the car on a visit to Manor’s premises when he was buying parts from its short-lived LMP programme. “At the back of a stores room there was one single-seater chassis and I asked what it was,” he says. “It was Lewis’s old car. Apparently it had been under the stairs for years in the old Manor building and they planned a restoration. They’d restored Kimi Räikkönen’s car” – the Finn was a Manor FRenault champion in 2000, before his amazing leap straight to Sauber and F1 in 2001 – “but never got around to Lewis’s. I said, ‘Please sell me that car.’ They reckoned [Manor founder] John Booth would never sell, but I kept pestering for a couple of years, until one day I got a call. They needed the space, so I was able to buy it. It was in a massive load of parts, still in the remnants of its old TAG livery. Prior to that it had been lent to a university so the students could look at how these things went together.”

Preserving cars for posterity is hardly a priority for gritty, unsentimental junior single-seater teams. So how come this one remained in ‘Hamilton spec’ rather than racing on with other drivers after 2003? There’s some tell-tale chassis evidence to answer that one. “Manor went to Hockenheim to race in a German FRenault round that year and found the spec of the German cars was different,” says Thornton. “So they had to start from the back of the grid. It sounds like a bit of a panicked weekend. I believe there was an accident and the car sustained damage. When we got the car it was clear it had been hastily repaired overnight between the Saturday and Sunday. We wanted to repair it and make it lovely, but leave some evidence of that damage because it’s part of the history. After that, they must have used a new chassis for the rest of the season, so there must be another one of these cars somewhere. That’s why it was kept aside as Lewis’s car.”

Thornton met Edginton “by chance” through their businesses and was impressed by his “absolute perfectionism” on restorations. Edginton sourced a period engine and set to work on what was a surprisingly laborious process for such a recent and common car. “Tatuus made something like 2500 cars, which I was surprised about,” he says. “Some have been crashed and disappeared but many are in use around the world. There was a chassis upgrade in around 2006 so nobody wanted the old bodywork which helped. I had a breakthrough in sourcing the original bodywork, the chassis was in good shape, it still had original stickers and we were able to match the paint perfectly.”

He also had to undo some of the ‘mods’ made by the university students. “It had been lent to be used as a simulator,” says Nick. “The upright hub flanges had been made out of plastic, as a project I suppose. The dashboard looked good from a distance, but it turns out it had been digitally printed and was also a large lump of plastic!”

Edginton’s lack of interest in the one-make era is irrelevant. “The challenge is to restore the car because it’s a piece of motor-racing history, which I think is important,” he says. “It needs to be persevered, maintained and looked after. There aren’t many drivers who have raced in Formula Renault that you’d go to the effort of restoring a car. The motivation was that it was done right.”

So now what? The car was recently on display in Stevenage, Hamilton’s old home town, will appear at Brooklands’ Autumn Motorsport Day on October 13 and will then head to the Haynes museum.

Thornton says he would love to reunite the seven-time world champion with his old flame. “He’d be welcome to come and have a drive. One other thing that’s inspiring is his charity work and it would be nice to do something. We have some of his trophies too, including his Macau 2004 Formula 3 qualification race winner’s trophy. We’d love to make contact.”