F1's negative end reveals the scale of many challenges

We've had some very good Formula 1 races in 2017, but I'm afraid the season finale in Abu Dhabi wasn't one of them. It did at least serve to highlight all the problems that the powers that be must sort out.

At the end of the first lap, the top 10 was: 1 Valtteri Bottas, 2 Lewis Hamilton, 3 Sebastian Vettel, 4 Daniel Ricciardo, 5 Kimi Raikkonen, 6 Max Verstappen, 7 Nico Hulkenberg, 8 Sergio Perez, 9 Esteban Ocon, 10 Felipe Massa - with Fernando Alonso tagging along in 11th.

Then look at the end of the race and the gaps between them:

Bottas - 3.9 seconds - Hamilton - 15.4s - Vettel - 26.0s - Raikkonen - 0.9s - Verstappen - 39.5s - Hulkenberg - 6.4s - Perez - 6.8s - Ocon. Then Alonso and Massa a lapped ninth and 10th. So the only place change in the top 10 was between Alonso and Massa, with everyone else moving up one place thanks to Ricciardo's hydraulic problem. Exciting and eventful?

The gaps between the drivers tell the real story of a race that was about as exciting as watching wet paint dry. Yes, the gaps ebbed and flowed as the race unfolded and a couple of times it looked like it might get interesting between Bottas and Hamilton. But in reality with these cars when you get within a couple of seconds of the car in front you lose too much downforce and therefore grip, you overheat the tyres and that's the battle over.

The Sky Sports F1 commentators spent the last half-hour of free practice one talking to Chase Carey. They did this without having to take a break and return to the on-track action once. This highlights just how exciting F1 practice sessions really are.

That, combined with a less-than-exciting race, must point to the fact that the new owners and the FIA need to go off and do something about it. Some might say they have but I don't think the new logo is going to bring a lot to the racing. But in the true spirit of F1, it probably cost an arm and a leg to make no real difference to those watching!

Even the drivers would probably agree with me that the race was a waste of a Sunday. Perhaps we need to get all the drivers who have won championships together in a room to get them to offer some guidance as to what way the regulations need to go in.

After all, there's a combined total of 11 world championships on the grid, and with so much experience they will surely have some idea of how to spice it all up a bit. By asking them, you put the responsibility on the end user as opposed to someone who sits in an office all day!

Surely Mercedes can't dominate for a fifth consecutive season? Abu Dhabi perhaps suggests it might. Ferrari will have a bit of head scratching to do to understand why it is so up and down

Even when the race itself isn't very memorable for the on-track action, the last race of the season is always remembered in other ways. It's the one that gives you the momentum over the winter.

It's a lot easier to get all the people around you to work the long hours required to finalise the design and build of a new car when you're coming off the back of a good result. If the season has sort of fizzled out, people start to question if anyone knows what direction you need to take.

It's the same thing for a driver. Bottas took pole position, fastest lap and led every lap so he will go into the winter far more confident than he would have done had the season ended a few races earlier.

He beat Hamilton on equal terms. And when you consider he beat Vettel by 19s as well, then Abu Dhabi was the race when Bottas came of age. Now he just needs to do that more regularly.

It was business as usual for Mercedes with a front-row lockout and a one-two. Although Mercedes scored fewer points than in the previous three years of the turbo hybrid era, it has still ended up as the dominant force.

So, who can take the fight to Mercedes? Surely it can't dominate for a fifth consecutive season? Abu Dhabi perhaps suggests it might.

Ferrari will have a bit of head scratching to do to understand why it is so up and down. Yes, it could also be Mercedes that's up and down, but however you look at it to offer a season-long challenge you need to be closer than Vettel and Raikkonen were in Abu Dhabi.

Vettel qualified 0.546s behind Bottas and finished 19.3s down after 55 laps. So even though Ferrari finished third and fourth it wasn't really at the races. Ferrari had a great start to the season, but couldn't maintain the momentum and when push came to shove, it suffered reliability problems, crashed or just wasn't fast enough often enough.

It was also a bad weekend for Toro Rosso, which slipped to seventh in the constructors' championship behind Renault. The reality is that this was a self-inflicted wound caused by playing musical chairs with its drivers.

Pierre Gasly and Brendon Hartley are competent drivers but they are new to F1. This, combined with the fact that the Toro Rosso is a marginal points-scoring car and the Renault engine problems meant that scoring points in the final races was always going to be difficult. Toro Rosso paid a big price and only has itself to blame.

On the other side of the coin, the works Renault team will be feeling pretty happy - at least on Hulkeberg's side of the garage. Qualifying seventh and finishing sixth was a great achievement for him and, once again, showed that if you give him the tools he will deliver the result.

It's a good platform for Renault for next year and it will take that boost into the winter. But we have to remember Hulkenberg was 92 seconds behind winner Bottas. So there's still a mountain or two to climb before Renault can get to the front.

Coming back to the regulations, there are some concerns going into next year. The T-wing should disappear, and this will upset Haas as it seemed to take the team 20 races to get the thing stable enough not to fall off! Now it's banned.

While the T-wing goes, the halo comes in. I agree with everyone else that it's pretty ugly and also believe it is heavy, expensive to integrate into the chassis and not really fit for purpose. But I also have to say that if it saves one life it will be worth the aggro.

The final thing we have is the ongoing tyre saga. We've just seen a race where you could have run all the way to the end on one set of the softest tyre in Pirelli's range. Strategy didn't matter, there was nothing in it.

So for 2018, we have a new range available with yet another softer compound. The big thing is that Pirelli must offer it up to be used. I don't think there was a race this year where most teams didn't pick more of the softest tyre Pirelli put forward than the others.

Compound naming has now got out of hand. It's a classic case of why make something simple when it can be difficult. I'd suggest the following:

Pirelli and the FIA's plan is the same as we currently have. Pirelli nominates three compounds for each circuit and allows the teams to say how many of each they want, but this has brought nothing to the show and basically it disappears into the unknown.

So it could do with a bit of a rethink. We need something where there is a bigger difference between the tyre performances to allow teams to use vastly different strategies that might just come together by the end of the race.

To improve the racing we also need cars that can follow each other closer without losing as much grip, tyres that don't overheat and a bigger difference between compound performance.

So, that's the challenge that Liberty Media, the FIA, the teams and drivers need to take on. There's been lots of arguing about engines, but as has been the case for several years someone needs to take a proper look at the whole thing to at last come up with answers that deliver what the fans really want.