Would F1 be better off without its big three?

Formula 1 has always been an unfair fight between its haves and have nots. This is inevitable in a world ruled by jungle law, where only the fittest survive. Might breeds success, success breeds money, money breeds more success, and round and round the cycle goes.

F1's big three teams are away and gone. Everybody knew it during pre-season testing. Haas team boss Gunther Steiner estimated their advantage was up to 1.5 seconds already. An impossible gap to bridge for the rest.

"Between the top three and the other ones it is between one second and 1.5 seconds I think," Steiner suggested. "The big teams will always have more resources to do it, and this is to be expected.

"There is no surprise that Mercedes and Ferrari and Red Bull came out better than everybody else. They have more resources to do more testing and that is what it is."

But F1 is under new ownership now, so the old rules need no longer apply.

Let's imagine a world in which the FIA has created controversial 'anti-domination laws', something we've already explored with theoretical 'Mercedes-free' 2015 and '16 seasons. Exploring those possibilities suggested losing the top team would do nothing for the overall competitive spread of the field.

But let's say Liberty Media decides to go further and eject the entire 'big three'.

Even massive rule changes can't slow Mercedes down, so once again the works team is coming under fire, while Ferrari is paying the price for winning too readily in Mercedes' stead. Red Bull fought for the title in 2016, so cleverly tried to mask its true pace with a low-drag car in testing, but everyone is on to its ruse, and Red Bull has been threatening to quit over the future engine rules anyway. Time to call Mr Mateschitz's bluff...

But realising the 'pure speed' approach is spurious and flawed, as well as subject to ongoing legal wrangling, Liberty instead decides to introduce a budget cap before the season gets under way.

Annual spending is capped at £100million. All teams that cannot comply with this mandate are immediately ejected from the championship. Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, Renault and McLaren-Honda all fall foul. McLaren and Renault decide to cut their cloth accordingly, but in a show of defiance - eager to protect investment and jobs - Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull dig their heels in. Liberty won't budge. The show must go on without them.

Formula 1 is left with only 14 cars on the grid, but it dropped to 18 at the back end of 2014 and survived without Mercedes for two years running already, so has proved it can ride out the storm.

F1 is always bigger than the sum of its parts, and its midfield fight has often historically proven more competitive than the battle for the world championship itself. The teams within it are more closely matched in terms of resources, so there is anticipation that F1's minnows will more than adequately fill the competitive void left by the departure of the big three.

When that trio get their books in order, they can come back any time.

The results of pre-season testing excluding Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull suggest Williams has the fastest car in the field, and so it generally proves as Felipe Massa qualifies inside the top two for each of the first four races. But apart from that form is difficult to read.

Romain Grosjean shows Haas has been sandbagging at Barcelona by grabbing pole for the Australian Grand Prix. He struggles to string a clean lap together initially, but pulls a brilliant one out of the bag to beat Massa to the top spot in the top-four shootout, with Toro Rosso pair Carlos Sainz Jr and Daniil Kvyat just behind.

Grosjean looks on for victory in Melbourne until a leak breaks his Ferrari engine's turbo, leaving Massa to take the spoils. He wins by more than 25 seconds as Sergio Perez forces his way past both STRs to finish a distant second.

Massa gets pole in China, but only by a slim 0.073s margin after a much-improved showing from Nico Hulkenberg's Renault. Perez and Kvyat are not far behind either, which sets up the prospect of a thrilling race.

As it turns out, a slick-tyre gamble in mixed conditions at the start pays off handsomely for Sainz, who survives an early spin and brush with the wall to win a grand prix for the first time with a sublime performance.

His Toro Rosso is in a league of its own and Sainz wins by more than 35s from Kevin Magnussen, who climbs from seventh on the grid to finish second for Haas.

Hulkenberg scores a brilliant pole position for Renault next time out in Bahrain, with a lap he describes as "silky smooth" - as good as the one that earned him his only previous pole in Brazil in 2010. But the RS17 cannot hold onto its Pirelli rubber on a track that features relatively high rear-tyre degradation, so Hulkenberg slips to a distant fourth in the race.

Massa takes the lead at the start and wins for the second time this season for Williams, eight seconds clear of Perez, who puts in a strong first lap to rise from 12th on the grid to seventh and makes further ground up in the pits.

Massa also retakes the championship lead as erstwhile points leader Sainz crashes out in a controversial collision with Massa's Williams team-mate Lance Stroll.

Massa wins another tight battle with Hulkenberg to claim pole in Russia, while the Force Indias utilise the strength of the Mercedes engine to lock out row two of the grid.

Hulkenberg again gets muscled out at the start and drops to fourth, while Massa looks on for a comfortable victory until slow punctures intervene and force him to make an extra pitstop.

This hands a first victory of the season to Perez, who with it assumes the championship lead from Massa, while Esteban Ocon makes it a one-two for Force India that stretches the team's lead at the top of the constructors' pile to 52 points after four races.

Meanwhile, F1's big three realise the error of their ways and announce they will cap annual spending at the agreed limit. Excess staff are redeployed to automotive projects (including Adrian Newey's Aston Martin pet special), while slimmed-down F1 operations gear up for a return to the grid in 2018.

Alternative drivers' championship (after four races)
1. Sergio Perez (Force India) 76
2. Felipe Massa (Williams) 66
3. Carlos Sainz Jr (Toro Rosso) 50
4. Esteban Ocon (Force India) 50
5. Nico Hulkenberg (Renault) 43
6. Romain Grosjean (Haas) 25
7. Daniil Kvyat (Toro Rosso) 24
8. Kevin Magnussen (Haas) 22
9. Jolyon Palmer (Renault) 10
10. Pascal Wehrlein (Sauber) 8

Alternative constructors' championship (after four races)
1. Force India 126
2. Williams 74
3. Toro Rosso 74
4. Haas 47
5. Sauber 17
6. McLaren 8

This alternative vision of the 2017 world championship would have produced three different pole winners and three different grand prix victors over the first four races, as well as some serious see-sawing at the top of the points table, with Massa, Sainz and Perez all taking turns to lead the way.

In similar fashion to the real battle at the front this season, Force India would also prove that success in F1 is not only about having the absolute quickest car.

But it's interesting to note the first four races of 2017 would have been less closely contested than the real deal were the top three teams removed.

The average gap from pole to the rest would be 0.212s, compared to 0.134s in the intense fights we've seen between Ferrari and Mercedes so far in 2017.

What's more, every race has been won by less than 10s, with the most recent won by just 0.617s. Without the top three teams present, two races (Australia and China) would have been dominated by one driver, and the closest overall winning margin would be 8.216s - between Perez and Ocon in Russia.

But a greater number of teams would be in the battle at or near the front. Williams, Haas, Force India, Toro Rosso and Renault have all made the podium in the alternative version of the world championship, because the competitive spread between them is closer than the difference between F1's real top three, and all five midfield teams are closer to the top two in the fantasy championship than Red Bull is to Mercedes and Ferrari this year in reality.

There can be no doubt the competitive start to 2017 between Mercedes and Ferrari has so far been a breath of fresh air for a series stultified by Mercedes' impressive and deserved dominance over the previous three seasons.

But it is a genuine shame Red Bull is not in the fight yet, and the others - including works team McLaren-Honda - are nowhere near being in the game. For the bulk of teams, there is no realistic hope of ever fighting at the front on merit.

Bernie Ecclestone always abided by the law of the jungle - 'If you don't like it go play somewhere else'. But no one, including F1's new owner it seems, thinks such glaring financial inequality is the best way to truly sustain a competitive sporting contest.

F1 has always been a contest between the haves and the have nots - and a largely thrilling one at that. But just think how much more thrilling it might be if its 'have nots' had a little more, or its 'haves' a little less.