I'm not so sure... OK, let me be the devil's advocate here:

Motorsport is so much about technology that it is a bit of a stretch of the imagination to call it "sport". All right, there is a human element, endurance, concentration, focus, reaction times, strategy too. But still, one could not say that it is as much "sport" as tennis or athletics or even football. And its following in the UK at least is not as great as for some of those other sports. That, after all, is also the reason why the BRDC is not flush with money and cannot afford to invest.

While I agree that not having Silverstone in the programme would sadden me a little, it wouldn't really be such a great loss. Any income to the area from having the circuit would be swamped by the policing costs. And the vast majority of the sport's followers watch it on the television, rather than go to the circuit. So - what does it matter where the pictures are being transmitted from?

It is an elite sport, because entry to the sport (as a competitor) is not cheap. As such, its social impact/benefit is minimal. The same money, spent to promote sports in inner city areas would have a better result, I argue, and might even provide us with a British basketball team or tennis player worth cheering in the next 10 years.

The sport also has an elite image. It is no longer the sport of truly enthusiastic amateurs tinkering in garages and coming up with innovations that change the world of motoring. Rather, it requires huge and expensive design teams trying dozens of options to squeeze a measly percentage of power or reduce drag, in ways that rarely get adopted by the industry nowadays. And its elite image is made worse by the prancing up and down of models, the corporate hospitality and the obligatory drenching in champaign (like the obligatory encore in a folk club these days; pointless).

The sport we remember and love was a different animal. Not this. Let this die.