The saddest sight of the week was the photograph of Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One commercial rights holder, standing outside his house in London staring at a jacked-up Mercedes with two wheels fewer than when he?d parked it the night before. It would be a surprise if it turned out to be the work of a professional thief rather than a disgruntled mechanic from the pit lane.

The highlight of any modern Grand Prix, as any of us who have fallen into a deep coma waiting in vain for one motorised cigarette packet to overtake another can confirm, is when the cars pop into the service station to have their wheels removed. Ignore all those nit-pickers who?d have you believe that you can get much the same thrill from spending a morning in the waiting room at Kwik-Fit, this is about the only excitement F1 ever generates.

Or it used to be. If you?ve been following the annual rule-changes designed to achieve the near impossible objective of making the sport even less exciting than the year before, you will know that all these tyre-changing chaps have been made more or less redundant. And, as Bernie has discovered, you can?t just take away a man?s spanner without suffering the consequences.

F1?s latest recipe for keeping the commentators on the edge of their seats ? and you suspect that the reason Murray Walker always did a race standing up was to prevent him from nodding off ? is to make the cars go from start to finish on the same set of tyres. The result of which is that the drivers all go a lot slower in order to prevent the tyres wearing out, thus turning the fortnightly procession from F1 into M25.

The tyre-changers in the pit lane have not been entirely left without anything to do, as you?re still allowed to change the pressures when you pop in for a few gallons of unleaded. But poking a matchstick into a tyre valve for a couple of seconds is hardly the most fulfilling way to earn a living. There must be a way not only to give the pit crews something more meaningful to do, but also ? given that there?s never much happening out on the circuit ? to pep up the afternoon?s entertainment.

You could, for example, put all the mechanics behind a counter, insist that all the drivers pay for their petrol with credit cards, and extend Silverstone all the way down to Newport Pagnell Services on the M1. The tension would mount to unbearable levels when Michael Schumacher got held up behind Juan Pablo Montoya, as the McLaren driver took advantage of the special offer of a free pair of plastic sunglasses on six gallons and over, or asked for a bag of charcoal briquettes to be added to the bill.

The claim that F1 is more exciting than it has been for years appears to be based on the fact that Schumacher is no longer riding around at the front with a glass of schnapps in one hand and his other twiddling the knob from pit-lane radio link to CD changer.

The fact is that it still boils down to who happens to be sitting inside the cockpit of the fastest car, the difference at the moment being that it?s not necessarily a red one.

It would be an unfair slur on the skills of these drivers to suggest that anyone capable of reversing out of a supermarket car park without hitting a line of parked trolleys could win a Grand Prix, but results are less about drivers as computers, designers and wind tunnels.

Fortunately, F1 has reacted in the nick of time to returning attention to the drivers themselves by banning the wearing of jewellery. Given that four bald tyres significantly enhance the prospect of skidding into the gravel trap at 200mph, the odds against such a mishap resulting in being hit in the eye by a flying Rolex has been significantly reduced.