Why do so many people hate modern F1?

So many people, it seems, hate modern Formula 1 - even people who have the rare and precious privilege of working in it.

Drivers, stakeholders, team principals, tyre-scrubbers, keyboard jockeys - you're hard pushed to meet anyone with a positive word to say. And, yes, pretty much all of this disgruntled assembly want F1 to go "back to how it used to be".

A parallel assertion, one that Jenson Button has made, is to claim that F1 has "a long way to go before it's good again", placing the championship's fondly remembered finest hour some way back in the dim and distant.

Well, there's a start. But how far to wind back the clock? That's where the opinions of our sundry whingers begin to diverge.

Fans are switching off in droves, we're told, because they're bored with tyre management, with fuel saving, and with the same two people winning all the time.

There's a classic logic fail, right there: post hoc analysis. Viewing figures are decreasing, so it must be because of all those complaints adumbrated in the paragraph above, right?

Well, maybe not. Those factors could have influenced the drop in viewers, but it could also be entirely coincidental, or it could be caused by another set of circumstances - F1 migrating to subscription TV services that many people don't want to pay for, perhaps?

As the author Jamie Whyte says in his book Bad Thoughts, "Not believing in coincidences is a manly pose adopted by many who fancy themselves savvy."

F1's viewing figures more than tripled between 1992 and '99, in spite of several seasons where one car/driver package was dominant and it was often only possible to overtake by pulling off the undercut during the pitstop phase. Michael Schumacher and Ferrari spent many of the subsequent years winning every fortnight.

And yet that is an era that Jenson, for one, remembers very fondly. V10s? Can't beat 'em.

While researching a picture book a few years ago I came across a highly revealing column in Autosport's one-time sister magazine Motor Sport, written by the venerable Denis Jenkinson. In the story - titled 'When Did You Lose Interest?' - 'Jenks' blasts the tiresome old farts who sidle up to him at race meetings and attempt "to draw me into their pet aversion".

Many of these will sound familiar to you.

"I find the ones I meet at gatherings other than grand prix events are the most vehement, so I ask the question, 'When did you lose interest?' to which I get evasive answers and a lot of chat about 'I don't go to Formula 1 races any more, can't stand those wide tyres and those wing things; more like aeroplanes than racing cars.'

"The objections cover a wide range of things, like 'they all look alike', 'can't see the driver working', 'all those fancy sponsors' colours they paint them nowadays', 'can't see the driver's face with those space helmets', and 'they've all got Cosworth engines'. While listening to these moans I can't help feeling that for people who have 'lost interest' they have a remarkable knowledge of the current scene!

"To tell the truth they are professional moaners who keep in touch with all the latest trends just so that they can complain..."

DSJ bashed these words into his typewriter in 1973, during a season that many of today's breed of serial complainers no doubt consider to be an unimproveable classic.

You might equally ask Ron Dennis about the first grand prix he attended in a working capacity, 50 years ago this October. John Surtees won the 1966 Mexican Grand Prix by just under eight seconds from Jack Brabham, with the next three finishers a lap down - and only eight drivers made it across the line.

The very first world championship grand prix in 1950? An Alfa Romeo 1-2-3 by a minimum of two laps from the other pre-war clunkers that trailed them past the chequered flag.

Compare and contrast with the current generation of F1 cars, which seldom break even though their drivetrains must be used for more than one race weekend, and which enable exciting battles to be fought all the way through the field... all the while being greatly more fuel-efficient than the average road car, let alone their high-revving V8 predecessors.

All other things being equal, the best driver in the best car will win. Perhaps we might best attribute the shrinkage in viewing figures to a whole subset of the population suddenly recognising this fundamental truth - and then deciding en masse to spend their Sunday afternoons playing golf, or riding their bicycles, or watching repeats of Columbo instead.

So, to all those people - yes, even you, Jenson - there's just one thing to say, a piece of wisdom imparted to me by a veteran F1 photographer who is still as passionate about the sport today as he was when he attended his first grand prix back in the 1980s:

"If you don't like it, go and work in a bank."