Goodbye Manor

[Owain]

The next problem is that F1 has too many races in too many continents. In my opinion, 20 races a year is way too much not only for the competitors but even fans. The teams sometimes need to rush their staff and equipment across continents within a matter of days, and when they arrive they have to pay a whole lot of fees to compete in the races.

Indeed, especially as many of those races are in countries with no history of motorsport, no fan base, no automotive industry, no history of providing drivers, and - frankly - no right to be in F1 other than that they paid for the kudos of having a race. This trend of the 2000s drove me nuts, and is part of the reason my 30-year passion for F1 has declined in recent years. I even gave up watching the 2015 season several races from the end (shock-horror!).

How many countries with a long F1 heritage have lost their races in order to make way for Tilke tracks with empty grandstands? Argentina, Holland, Portugal, South Africa, San Marino ... it's nice to see Mexico back, though.

As for the demise of the 2010 teams, there was a lot of talk at the time about the Brabham name coming back, as well as Lotus. I was strongly in favour of this, but considering that they've all folded (with the Lotus name being tossed around in a way that it never deserved), I'm quite glad they didn't after all.