TAKING IT BACK TO FORMULA

I'm sure we all sleep in our beds easier knowing that, from this week, cigarette manufacturers can no longer sponsor Formula One motor racing in Europe.

I, for one, think it's very important to disassociate an unhealthy vice like smoking from the health conscious pursuit of utilising non-renewable fossil fuels in a combustion engine by driving at high speed around a great big circle.

To be honest, I don't think that the tobacco sponsorship of Formula One was really working anyway. I know two fans of Formula One and neither of them smoke. Both of them drive cars, however. That seems to me the more likely natural crossover market. You never saw the winning F1 drivers standing on the podium spraying the crowd with champagne with a cigarette attached to their bottom lip. Nobody was making pit stops saying "Ah, just light me up and I'll be on my way." Between you and me, I don't think the Formula One cars even have a cigarette lighter on the dashboard, much less a pop out ashtray beside the driver's knee.

I guess the drivers were too busy weaving through the pack of cars at high velocity, taking corners at speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour, spinning out of control and ramming into the bales of hay they have at the edges of the course, occasionally having their engines burst into flame.

To make Formula One really healthy, you probably need to think about enforcing the speed limits. Get all those drivers doing the circuit at no more than 70, drop it down to 30 for those inner city races where they're going through a residential area the whole time. They wouldn't need to do these 25 lap races anymore. A couple of times around Le Mans at 30 mph - the afternoon's over.