First of all, let me make it clear that ITV’s F1 coverage irritates me immensely, whether it’s the fanboy drooling over Lewis Hamilton, the ongoing idiocy of James Allen, the breathless reassurance that Coronation Street will follow shortly, the casual assumption that F1 fans couldn’t possibly want to listen to all three drivers speak in the press conference, the replacement of articulate, insightful Tony Jardine with the endlessly incoherent Mark Blundell or, the most fundamental gripe, the adverts during live race coverage.

The latter is, of course, an ongoing source of annoyance to many F1 fans, since ads seem to often fall just as a crash/an overtaking move/a last lap of the bloody race happens. At 3am I don’t want to buy some crappy car insurance or get a home loan: I’ve got out of bed at this ungodly hour to watch a race because (for some reason) I still love this sport. Can you imagine the howls of outrage if ITV showed ads during football matches? Yet missing crucial moments (like the last lap of a race) is apparently perfectly acceptable in F1 coverage.

However, having said that, I am regularly bemused by the rose-tinted view that tends to be taken of the BBC F1 coverage back in the day. Yes, there were no ads. Yes, there was no James Allen. These are both Good Things. But I can remember races that weren’t shown live, when all we got was a 25 minute highlights show (I still have that one on video somewhere, I think it was Japan 1992 or 1993 … I’m showing my age here), or races that got truncated because they overran and Grandstand had to return to Live Tiddlywinks from Milton Keynes. Quite simply, it wasn’t the Golden Age some would like to think it was.

ITV have their faults (see above) and the placement of ads is the worst, in my opinion, but I’m not convinced that the BBC would do a fundamentally better job. And don’t even get me started on Eurosport - their treatment of GP2 over the last two seasons has sometimes bordered on farcical. If ITV could just sort out those bloody adverts, I might even think kindly of James Allen.