Brundle: F1 is very strong

"Formula 1 is very strong," said Brundle on stage at the AUTOSPORT International Show today (Friday). "It is still the biggest sport in the world after the Olympics and the World Cup. If you look at what the teams have got to spend, it is still far more than they had three years ago and the TV figures are still far bigger than they were three years ago. So let's just keep it in perspective."

Brundle did admit that F1 has problems that it needs to address: "They do need to take some action. F1 can't put its head in the sand and think everything is fine.

"A grand prix team will always spend all the money it can minus a little bit of profit to keep itself in business. If you were to stop teams testing they would put millions into simulators and that sort of thing. Whatever you change the top teams will find a way around it.

"You can't stop new technology coming along. We have what we have. The trouble is that F1 is high-tech, the manufacturers want to be in it to show their engineering skills so how much can you dumb down the cars? What bothers me is that someone like Nico Rosberg, who is a very competent lad who may one day be as brilliant as his dad, but is only 17 years old and has done one year of circuit racing, jumped in an F1 car recently and got it pretty much near the pace straight away.

"That's says one thing to me, the cars are too easy to drive."

Brundle, who's ITV programme struggled to entertain viewers last year because of the capped coverage it was forced to show against the extensive coverage that was available on digital TV, believes that the sporting regulations that have been changed to spice up the show will work. "I think qualifying the FIA has got sorted.

"I think it is going to be far more interesting and certainly a lot less predictable and we are going to see everyone perform in their allocated two minutes. What I don't think they have done enough of is closing the pack up on grand prix day. I'm hoping we are going to see some fireworks on January 15, when Max Mosley forces on them some aspects of trying to cut some costs and even slow that cars up a little bit.

"He can only do that through the sporting regulations, not the technical ones. It requires a hundred per cent agreement from the teams. If you were Frank Williams or Ron Dennis and you need to find $300million to run your team, you're winning championships, you have the drivers, the best engineers, why would you happily give that up to a midfield team? Particularly a team boss that has not invested, not run his team so well and is not as competitive.

"I can understand that. Why would they give up their competitive advantage, they are competitive people? They need to win and that's why they've ended up in the positions they are in".