Formula One fans have been spoiled. Only now is it becoming apparent that what we had for so long, and that which we all complained about and labelled processional, boring and predictable, was in fact exactly what we wanted.

Throughout the 90s and until the banning of refuelling we witnessed Formula One in a form it had never been seen in before. Drivers and teams pushed the envelope of performance as they sprinted from start to finish replenishing fuel and tyres with gleeful abandon.

A sequence of qualifying laps by Michael Schumacher effectively won him the 1998 Hungarian Grand Prix over David Coulthard. A strategy change made mid-race piled the pressure on the German, under which he excelled in pushed his and the car's combined ability for lap after lap in his desperate charge against the clock. It was that string of laps which won the race for Schumacher, not hunting down and passing Coulthard on track which is what most would consider 'racing'.

It was hailed a supreme drive by a supreme driver. The media waxed lyrical about the achievement failing to note the elephant in the room; there hadn't been any racing.

But we'd seen lap after lap of the best driver pushing his car into the realms of the unimaginable. It was poetry, of sorts, the like of which Ayrton Senna described his qualifying lap in Monaco in 1988.

To see Schumacher sprinting from pit stop to pit stop throughout the duration of a Grand Prix is a comparatively unusual way of going Grand Prix racing. It was a style that existed only while refuelling was within the regulations and a technique Schumacher demonstrated perfectly at that the Hungaroring. He went on to exploit it so mercilessly the FIA changed the regulations.

At first we applauded the change as it put an end to the dreary dull races we'd grown accustomed to, longing for the days of the 1980's where the driver could make the difference.

There is a photo taken in 1986 of Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet and Alain Prost sitting on a wall. It stands as a symbol of one of the greatest eras of the sport, we recall, when men were giants and stood as modern day gladiators in the motor sport amphitheatre.

The photo also symbolises an era when tyre and fuel management were critical factors in the outcome of races and the championship, a factor which has been forgotten in the 25-years since it was taken.

The 1986 championship was famous less for its knife edge racing as the closing stages of the final race of the year. The season took place during the height of the turbocharged era with engines whose brake horsepower was only marginally smaller than their rev limits. Fuel the nemesis as drivers dialled the boost up and down in an effort to reach the end. They did not sprint. Often they crawled.