Stop thinking small teams are worse off now

It's very easy to point out problems and talk about what you want to achieve, but it's far more difficult to come up with ways to make it happen.

It is also too easy to take for granted the benefits of what you already have, and those that benefit most from Formula 1 are the ones that usually complain the most. They must remember not to bite the hand that feeds them.

As far as everyone seems to be concerned, now that Bernie Ecclestone has gone and Liberty Media is in charge, the future is bright. Or is it?

I haven't seen anything from the new owners of the commercial rights that convinces me they really know what makes F1 tick and, in reality, you have to ask: was there or is there anything so wrong with what we currently have?

Bringing in all these other attractions is fine, but let's make sure they remember what the main event is. It would be horrible to see F1 not stand on its own two feet and become a sideshow to something else.

Teams are complaining about Mercedes and Ferrari being so far ahead of the rest. Perhaps with the exception of the improving Red Bull, that is absolutely true. And if Mercedes and Ferrari don't trip over themselves or each other, it will be very difficult for any other team to catch them.

Like anyone with an interest in F1, I have always wanted and still want more cars fighting for victory. But getting there is not going to be down to the teams simply working harder, it's going to be a result of the regulations being written in such a manner that performance is not dictated by budget.

A lot of people complain about how bad it is now and that the budget is so important, but it has never been much different, and the teams with the big bucks - at least those who combine the resources with the knowhow - have always brought home the results.

"Haves and the have-nots has always been the case in F1. If anything, changing the points has helped to spread success around more"

Looking at 2017, and (going back in one-decade steps) 2007, 1997, 1987 and 1977 - which covers my time spent one way or another in F1 and motorsport in general ­- and converting the points allocated to a percentage gives us a picture of where grand prix racing has been and how much it has changed.

What it very obviously shows is that it was always about 'those that have' and 'those that don't'.

The point-scoring system has changed several times over the past 40 years, with the three key changes being points for victory rising from nine to 10 in 1991, points being extended to the top eight in 2003, and then the switch to the current 25 points for a win and top 10 scoring system introduced in 2010. So, I have looked at the points as a percentage of the maximum possible.

The change to give points to the top eight, and then the top 10, were both positive ones as they gave more teams the chance to score and therefore have something to sell to sponsors.

Under the previous points systems you could finish seventh, or later ninth, and you would get nothing for it even though, as a small team, you would have had a reasonable day at the office. And with the current points system, those 'in the middle' teams do generally get more reward in terms of how much of their potential maximum points they achieve.

As we are 11 races into this season's championship, I have looked at that point in each of the seasons in question.

Points percentage comparison 1977-2017

How each position in the constructors' championship fared in terms of maximum available points

What this shows is that the current points system does contribute to runaway winners. Drivers should always be awarded more for race wins than anything else, but perhaps another new points system, with something like 25-20-16-13-10-8-6-4-2-1, would be better and would help to keep the championship at the front alive for longer.

You could even allocate an extra point if a driver won consecutive grands prix to keep rewarding wins.

The biggest difference between the 2007 and '17 championships and the earlier ones is reliability. Today, finishing rates are much higher and problems like the one that put Lewis Hamilton out of last year's Malaysian Grand Prix, costing him the world championship, are the exception rather than the norm.

When you consider that in the 1970s a typically largish F1 team would consist of around a dozen people - and when the season started eight or so of them would go off racing - it's no wonder that reliability was always a bit dodgy.

During the winter you would actually help the fabrication guys build your own chassis and from there you and your number-two mechanic would 'build' your car, then it was off racing; there were no sub-assembly people building bits back at the shop - you did everything between the two of you.

When you arrived at the circuit in your van on a Thursday you were very lucky if you saw a hotel room before Sunday night, such was the workload.

There were no test rigs for anything; most of it was finger-in-the-air stuff to see which way the wind was blowing, then just basically get on with it. If the car was damaged you stripped down the chassis and riveted on some new panels. Many times we would work through the night doing just that - it's such a different world now.

This explains the increase from somewhere around 48-64% of possible points scored by the winning driver to the current level of 73% for both Kimi Raikkonen in 2007 and Sebastian Vettel today.

But in terms of the haves and the have-nots, it's always been the case in F1. If anything, the fact that there are points available to 10 cars in each race has helped to spread the points around that little bit more. While the points percentage scored by the lower-placed teams in the constructors' championship fluctuates a little, they are always feeding on the scraps left by the big teams.

No matter how you reward the teams, there will always be the haves and the have-nots, and all those in between. That doesn't mean you can't work to improve things - and there's plenty that can be done - but the mistake is to think that F1 was something it never was in the past.