As reported elsewhere, Max Mosley has warned that he is prepared to force through a number of changes in time for 2005, should the team bosses fail to reach agreement at next Monday's meeting.

Talking of costs, according to The Daily Telegraph quotes Mosley as saying: "No one benefits by all this money spent on engine development. It is the domain of a tiny priesthood of experts. They spend billions on researching and testing ultra-expensive components that no one sees and of which the public are completely unaware.

"People have no idea that someone has managed at huge expense to reduce the weight of a piston by three grammes, made a hollow connecting rod of some ultra-sophisticated alloy or devised an extremely ingenious moveable inlet system. What is more, they do not care."

This is of course quite true. However, by the same token, people don't understand that brake ducts which are a couple of millimetres too wide - and not a performance gain - get four drivers, including the second-placed man - disqualified, hours after a race is over.

Nor do ordinary people understand how a driver can be disqualified, 57 laps into a 73-lap race, for a misdemeanour involving two or three seconds.