Having mentioned the movie Grand Prix on Saturday, a friend from back home casually commented that F1 just isn’t as good as it used to be. Asked rather coldly to explain himself, said friend made comments, the implication of which was that the modern, safer F1 can’t possibly be as good, because the drivers simply don’t have the balls of their predecessors.

Anyone of that opinion should take a look at the footage from last year’s race here Monza, which took place in utterly appalling, borderline red-flag conditions. Sebastian Vettel won the race, but had possibly an easier afternoon of it, having been in front from the start.

A better story comes from Robert Kubica. He was puzzled to hear his engineer giving him the gap back to Nick Heidfeld: Big Robert had thought he was chasing his team-mate. Only later did he figure out he’d passed Nick somewhere on the main straight, but hadn’t seen the other car because of the spray. Just to go over that again, Robert, no stranger to big accidents, had his foot flat to the floor, on the fastest section of the fastest racetrack in F1, during conditions so apocalyptic he couldn’t see a white car equipped with a high-visibility tail light as he passed it at a distance of no more than a couple of feet.

Whether or not F1 possesses a bygone, never-to-be-repeated Golden Age is an issue both emotive and subjective, and feel free to make comment and join in the debate below, but questioning the courage of anyone prepared to do something like that just doesn’t stack up – whatever era they race(d) in.

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