Are you sure that you watched the same racing series as the rest of us, Sir? Except for a few ridiculous pay drivers like Mazzacane, Lavaggi or Deletraz, nobody comes to Formula One without merit. Back in the olden days people, who were quick enough were approached by the teams and sent on their merry ways. Back in the late eighties and the nineties, teams and other operations, like Dead Bull started running young driver programs. Mercedes has one, as does McLaren, Ferrari and Dead Bull. Many of today's crop of car ridists have come through one of these programs.
Back in 1991, a certain M. Schumacher was part of the Mercedes junior program in the sports car WC. Attention, pub quiz ammo: Did you know that Schumacher came into F1 as a pay driver? Anyway, I digress. Paul di Resta, Christian Albers, Dario Franchitti, Jamie Green - all people, who took the DTM/ITC route to top level motorsports and they were all Mercedes men. Vettel, Klien and others were backed by Dead Bull. Hamilton was signed by McLaren as soon as he stopped soiling his diapers and was developed with the specific goal of getting him into F1. Yes he has been lucky to get a winning car right from the start, but that doesn't take away from his talent. McLaren wouldn't have brought him in without being convinced that he would get the job done.
Were you get the idea from that Vettel was handed a winner, I don't know. I can't remember Torro Rosso winning too many races. In fact they won exactly one - and that was down to sheer talent on behalf of Vettel and some mediocre tactics by the opposition. Except for Hamilton, who was lucky enough that his backers happened to have a superior car, the lot of them all had to prove themselves in lesser machinery. And before someone says again that Hamilton was spoon fed - you guys seem to forget that he won titles in lesser formulae, where the cars are technologically more or less equal. Nobody gets plopped into a winning car without having proven beforehand that he/she is a bloody good driver. If anything, it happened in the nineties, when the likes of Damon Hill or Jacques Villeneuve were plopped into the most superior car and lamed their way to a WDC. But even these two had proven to be good-ish drivers beforehand (Villeneuve was CART and Indy500 champion, Hill had served as test ridist and managed to qualify that godawful Brabham before getting the Williams seat)