So the sporting world is consoling itself at not only England’s loss at rugby and football over the last week, but also Lewis Hamilton’s loss of the Formula 1 World Championship. There’s no doubt that Hamilton has a prodigious talent. And he’s a great example of dedication and a fabulous role model for modern British society.

But, in a world of diminishing resources and spiralling CO2 emissions, celebrating a group of playboy multi-millionaires ploughing round a circuit that leads nowhere is surely a relic of a different age. If F1 is to remain relevant, surely the question is not the temperature at which fuel is injected into highly tuned race cars, but rather if it can reinvent itself to be an example of how technology can be more appropriate for the age in which we live. Its time for F1 to produce super cars that do not burn fossil fuels or pollute at all, but rather develop a technology that adds something new to socially responsible technical innovation.

When they do that I’ll cheer Lewis Hamilton too. But until then I’m utterly disaffected from what just seems a pointless wasteful noise and ozone polluting anachronism.