This year I fell asleep during three of the races and this is a Simmonds record. The previous best was the Schumacher domination years where – every year – from around 1998 to 2005 I fell asleep on average of twice during a season. Strange really, as now I really think I miss ‘Schumi’ and he would add some spark into a series where the races themselves are dull processional affairs, where engineers dictate the outcome and even tell the drivers when to ‘push’ (car driving parlance for ‘go faster’…) Before the race the commentators cheerily show charts on screen which tell the watchers that this bloke will pit on this lap as he’s only fuelled for so many laps thereby removing any real need to watch the race anyway. During the race itself (which is far too long… how about two shorter races like World Superbike?) they then continue to explain that despite where ‘X’ is on track, he’s actually behind ‘Y’ who has yet to pit… Christ, how dull! Little wonder Valentino Rossi turned his back on F1 saying it was a sport for engineers. And then there’s the politics. Even if you ignore the Red Top goings on with Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone saying or doing the wrong thing, or tit-for-tat mudslinging between either of these two and ex-champions, there’s been an amazing level of cheating going on.

Over the last few seasons we’ve had teams spying on each other, teams moaning about the legality of other team’s cars, drivers deliberately crashing to let their team-mate secure an advantage, and even the world champ being told to lie to race control about what they said or did.  Imagine this in MotoGP????

There’s plenty to criticise in MotoGP – too few bikes, too few riders, the odd dull race and some ill-thought out rules, but sometimes, just sometimes it all comes together, doesn’t it? Like Laguna Seca last year, or Catalunya this year where it’s man and machine versus man and machine, no engineer pressing a button in the pits to adjust this and that, and no-one shouting in Casey Stoner’s head-set to ‘push’ (I can imagine what Casey’s reply would be…)

So, while I hope that next year I’ll doze less during the Formula 1 races with some more rule changes afoot, my early piece of advice to  the sport that makes the Annual Paint Drying competition seem a blast, is to take a leaf or two out of MotoGP’s book: more characters, fewer engineers, less lying wankers.