Much of the gossip at Silverstone was about the new star of GP2, Lewis Hamilton. He is tipped for a drive at McLaren next year, although this seems unlikely in view of the team’s need to have two experienced and proven drivers to maximise the potential of the car.

It raises the point of how drivers will progress into F1, now that the Minardi name has disappeared. The team lives on in the shape of Scuderia Toro Rosso but its ethos has changed fundamentally; it is now intended to be a gateway for American drivers into F1. Perhaps the big teams will come to regret the demise of little Minardi, for it has given so many now-famous drivers their first break in the premier formula.

Consider some of the names that once drove for the second Italian team. Michele Alboreto had an early association with the team and Pierluigi Martini had a Minardi seat for many years. Then Alessandro Nannini, Gianni Morbidelli, Christian Fittipaldi and Alex Zanardi made their F1 debuts in Minardi cars. And there was a time when the team was run by a certain Flavio Briatore.

Even today, there are drivers who owe their start to Minardi; Jarno Trulli and Mark Webber are two, for a start. And then there is some guy named Fernando Alonso. With a name like that, what chance did he stand of getting into F1, had not Minardi eased him in?

So I wish Lewis Hamilton the best of luck. I hope he gets the F1 drive he so clearly deserves, but I suspect that he might have to wait a bit longer than next year before someone gives him a chance.

At Silverstone, Max Mosley talked about the possibility of changing the rules yet again by reducing the final qualifying session from 20 minutes to 15. This is what he had to say: “It would be 15 minutes of non-stop action. But whether the teams want to do that, I don’t know.”

To my mind, this illustrates the condescending attitude of the FIA towards the fans. The assumption is that all we are interested in is “non-stop action”, like teenagers with attention deficit disorder. Well, I have news for Mr Mosley: F1 fans have to be amongst the most knowledgeable of all sports fans. The sport is extremely complicated, even without the constant rule changes introduced by the FIA, and yet every F1 fan understands and appreciates it. They wouldn’t be fans otherwise.

It is about time that the FIA ate some humble pie by rescinding some of the most ridiculous rule changes ever made by a governing body. So the one-lap qualifying rule was a complete flop? If he’d listened to anyone who knew the sport, Max would have understood that we don’t want a lottery – we want to see drivers getting the utmost from their cars in a battle for grid positions. And we don’t think it’s fair that one blown engine can ruin a driver’s chances for the GP. Let them battle it out over two days of qualifying as they used to, swap engines when necessary and recover from momentary mistakes.

Yes, it’s true that, in those bad old days, we had to sit and watch an empty track for three quarters of an hour before the cars came out to give it everything. But here’s the thing, Max – we didn’t mind. We understood what was happening and were prepared to wait for those incredible final minutes when the best drivers in the world showed us just how fast they really were.

You can say to me that the last three minutes of qualifying at Silverstone were as tense and involving as one could hope for. Three minutes? You mean all those rule changes boil down to this – three minutes of real competition? It sounds very familiar.

And let us not forget that there were two very capable drivers who were excluded from those minutes by bad luck in the first session. Does it not occur to anyone that Button’s and Trulli’s fans might be a bit disgruntled that their drivers were given no chance of a realistic grid spot through a silly rule that reduces F1 to a lottery?

Many of the rule changes of recent years have been made to make F1 more of a “spectacle” for the benefit of TV audiences. Time and again, the FIA introduces changes in an attempt to make things more competitive and exciting. Yet the net result is confusion to the casual viewer and irritation to the real fans. We really don’t need this constant meddling that merely makes things worse.

This is what Ferrari’s Ross Brawn had to say on the matter: “Too many changes confuse the public and are bad for F1.” How true. Let’s have one more rule change to put things back the way they were and then never touch them again. And let the FIA get back to its real business of designing an engine and chassis formula that makes sense and attracts the greatest number of competitors.

F1 is the pinnacle of motor sport; it was gripping before anyone had ever heard of Mr Mosely and it will remain so only if we allow the drivers a decent chance to prove themselves. And that means qualifying sessions that give everyone a fair crack of the whip.