Will F1's 2017 rule changes improve racing?

At Autosport International last weekend I had many a conversation about the state of Formula 1, and the prospects for 2017, when we have what some are calling 'a whole new breed' of car. Are the changes necessary - or even desirable? Some said yeah, others nay.

In considering a personal future that could hardly be brighter, Max Verstappen recently said he had little interest in records, be they for poles, wins or championships.

"To achieve things like that you have to have the best car for a very long time, like Michael Schumacher had at Ferrari, or Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes. Fernando Alonso should have had five or six world championships, but he's only had two - things happen. I'd be happy simply to have a successful career."

Given that Stirling Moss never won a world championship, nor Chris Amon a grand prix, I've never been terribly moved by raw statistics, and as time goes by 'all-time records' mean ever less, given that bulletproof reliability is a phenomenon only of recent times - and that there are at least twice as many point-scoring races as once there were. In his eight-year world championship career, Juan Manuel Fangio competed in 51 Grandes Epreuves, which these days is a matter of two and a half seasons.

In Formula 1 there have always been periods when one team stole a march on the rest, but invariably, for one reason or another, these did not last too long.

What has been different about the 21st century is that seasons of domination - from Ferrari, then Red Bull and latterly Mercedes - have gone on and on: no surprise that Schumacher, Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel occupy three of the top four places in the winners' list.

Four years ago, Alonso had 32 victories, to Hamilton's 22, but since Fernando's last, at Barcelona in 2013, Lewis has won 31 times. Mercedes, as briefly in the 1950s, has been on another planet.

Having concluded in 2013 that 47 Monaco GPs were probably enough, I began instead to spend that weekend in May at Indianapolis, watching Monaco on TV over breakfast at the Honda motorhome. It was there in 2014, as I reminded him at the NEC, that Dario Franchitti murmured to me: "Are you telling me they charge people money to watch this?"

Unarguably, it was pretty soporific, but then - in terms of racing - down the years that is how Monaco has invariably been. Rosberg beat Hamilton to pole, then beat him to Ste Devote, and an hour and 50 minutes later they took the flag. A few hours on, I watched Ryan Hunter-Reay do the same, followed - six hundredths of a second later - by Helio Castroneves, whom he had passed on the last lap.

Very well, we're talking apples and pears here: a sinuous thread through the streets is not the same as a flat-out oval. And I appreciate, too, that in this sadly depleted era of IndyCar racing everyone - give or take a Chevy or Honda - has essentially the same equipment, but I also know that as they crossed the line I was on my feet, and that hasn't been so at a grand prix for a long time.

If Barcelona - where Kimi Raikkonen shadowed Verstappen in the late laps - provided a stimulating finish last year, it was only because Nico Rosberg and Hamilton had obligingly taken each other out; had they not, Max and Kimi would have been scrapping over third.

For many, therefore, the vexed query in Birmingham last weekend was, 'Will it be better, with the new rules, in 2017?' To that one must add, 'For whom?'.

I don't doubt that, with 'aero' significantly freed up, and downforce greatly increased, the drivers will revel in grip levels not seen for years, but I remain to be convinced that, once they've grown accustomed to the sight of higher cornering speeds, the spectators will be quite so entranced.

Unless I'm missing something - and I hope I am - a combination of 'dirtier air', lower top speeds and shorter braking distances sounds like anything but a recipe for better racing, even with the benighted DRS.

It is almost 50 years since 'the wing' made its first appearance in Formula 1, Amon's Ferrari and Jack's Brabham wearing it at Spa in 1968, where Chris took pole by nearly four seconds.

"Practice was a bit inconclusive," Amon said. "The wing was primitive, of course, and whatever you gained in the corners you lost on the straights, because of the drag - I did similar times with and without it.

"[Jacky] Ickx decided not to use it in the race, but I went with it, mainly because it made the car more stable. At the time, though, I can remember thinking, 'Jesus, what can of worms are we opening here?'"

'A big one' was the answer to that, and we have been stuck with it ever since. The 'Gurney flap' may have gone into the language of motor racing, but when I recently talked to Dan about the public's waning interest in the sport, he was rueful.

"Looking back, something that wasn't good - in the long run - was the advent of wings, and that would be the thing I would take off. What racing needs is more power, and less downforce, but it's gone completely the other way."

When a man like Pat Symonds, contemplating the 2017 cars, speaks in terms of 'some corners effectively becoming straights', I think we have cause for worry.

"If you take away Eau Rouge," Ayrton Senna once said, when the future of Spa's iconic switchback was under debate, "you take away the reason I do this..."

Back then it was flat only for one or two - and then only in qualifying. Now long routinely flat for everyone, it remains spectacular, but means much less than it did.

As Gurney put it: "Driving a race car should be more difficult, and it should look that way - I think that's what people really enjoy."