Jeremy Clarkson's review of the U.S. grand prix.

Have to say that I agree with him.

WHEN we came back from one of the endless commercial breaks during last weekend’s American Grand Prix, the commentator said “Don’t worry. You haven’t missed anything.”

You’re not kidding, mate. You could have run the commercial break for a year and we wouldn’t have missed anything.

Formula One must now rank with synchronised fishing as the dullest spectator sport in the known world.

It’s not Ferrari’s fault. They have spent squillions so we can hardly expect them to drive around slowly, just to let everyone else catch up.

It’s not ITV’s fault either. They have Martin Brundle, who’s brilliant, and at the US race they offered lots of new camera angles and lots of graphics to explain what’s what.

But I still thought long and hard about turning over to Channel 8. And watching a sea of white noise instead. It would have been more interesting.

So what has gone wrong?

I blame the world’s current obsession with technology, the belief that it’s better to play football on a PlayStation than it is to play it for real.

Just recently, I drove a BMW down a mountain on one of those sinewy, twisty roads full of hairpin bends and death-defying drops. Nothing odd in that, except I didn’t touch the brakes once.

Every time I turned the wheel, the car’s on-board computer would do a calculation and if it figured I was going too fast for the bend, it would apply the brakes for me.

Then, the other day I was tooling along a motorway in a new Mercedes.

Its cruise control was using radar to hold me down to the speed of the car in front.

And when that pulled out of the way, it sped me up and surged me past.

I didn’t even have to think where I was going. The satellite navigation system did that for me. And when I arrived at my destination, parking was a doddle.

I just backed up until the car beeped to signal it was close to the car behind.

Now this is road car stuff I’m talking about here.

This technology has to work in searing heat and in freezing cold.

It has to work on the unmade roads of Australia and the autobahns of Germany. And it has to go on working for ten or 20 years.

So God knows what kind of advanced equipment is currently being fitted to Formula One cars, which only have to last, on a smooth race track, for two hours.

I watched some of those new on-board shots at the weekend and couldn’t believe how easy life seemed to be for the driver.

The car changed gear for him and he could accelerate when he wanted coming out of a corner, knowing that the computer wouldn’t let the wheels spin.

Then, afterwards Ross Brawn announced that with ten laps to go, the Ferrari team had turned their cars’ engines down.

The mere fact an engine can be turned down is astonishing. That it can be done from the pit wall boggles the mind.

But what good does it do? It means the cars are less likely to break down and less likely to crash.

And we already know they can’t overtake. So what, exactly, are we watching here?

If I want to watch cars going along I’ll stand on a motorway bridge, thanks. The fact is that if we carry on at the current rate, there will soon come a time when the driver becomes redundant.

They’ll simply programme the car and let it go.

But we need the drivers. They’re the heroes. They’re the reason we watch. So let’s rip out the stuff that’s taking their skill away.

The auto gearboxes and the traction control. Sever the links to the pit wall.

Give us Formula One, unplugged.