It’s Sunday morning and once again that  old Fleetwood Mac melody is churning round my brain.  It can only mean that the BBC has been bombarding me with adverts for the start of another Grand Prix season.  This time, apparently, it will not be a procession of motorised billboards going round in circles – it will be a race.  And the bloke in front will be the guy who is actually leading rather than the one who has the wrong fuel strategy or tyres.

As a closet Formula One fan I suppose I find the idea that they might actually be racing again quite intriguing.  I am not sure when or how Formula One lost its way.  Probably when Michael Schumacher, by far the best driver was shoehorned into by far the best car.  Add on the fact that the fastest car also starts from the front of the grid – and you have the perfect recipe for dull predictability.  I mean would Usain Bolt seem anything like as awesome if he won by yards having been given a clear head start?

So from today the cars apparently go out and race.  If they come into the pits its because something is wrong and needs putting right.  No longer will we have commentators getting hysterical about a group of blokes changing a wheel or filling up with petrol  We know from our own visits to Tesco that popping into the garage is rarely exciting.  Racing should surely be confined to the race track.

So here we go again.  I have to say that from my cynical viewpoint the signs are not good.  The formula one circus is kicking off in some sterile desert in the middle east rather than in front of a crowd of fans.  I think it ends just down the sand track in Abu Dhabi too.  Maybe it is just me – but these new tracks (that presumably are unsued for 51 weeks of the year) look rather too much like computer games and rather too little like sporting theatre.

Still – let’s give them all a chance.  The papers have been hard at it trying to hype up some excitement – ignoring last year’s evidence that the only thing that matters is the car.  So even though the German bogeyman is back – he probably won’t do very much unless his car is at least as good, or more likely significantly better, than the other, younger guys.  But stranger things have happened – just ask Jenson Button.