Formulaic

Back in the before time -- when the names were Jim Clark and Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart, Ayrton Senna and Niki Lauda and Alain Prost -- Formula One used to be an actual racing series. The lads used to flit around from Monaco to Zandvoort to Watkins Glen, and sometimes Lotus won and sometimes it was BRM  -- or, later, Ferrari or Williams or McLaren.

There was dicing. There was competition. There were rivalries worth noting, because they were actual rivalries and not hammer-vs.-nail rivalries.

Which brings us to yesterday, and the Hammer-vs.-Nail Grand Prix in France.

Lewis Hamilton won easily in his Mercedes, his sixth win in eight races so far this season. Valtteri Bottas finished second in his Mercedes. No one except those two have won a race so far this year. No one not driving for Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull has posted a top-five finish. Only five drivers have finished on the podium in eight races, and the two Mercedes pilots have finished 1-2 in six of them. The only other driver with a second-place finish is Sebastian Vettel for Ferrari.

Who actually broke Mercedes' stranglehold by winning in Canada, only to have the victory stripped on an absurd stewards' ruling. Which handed the victory to -- shocker! -- Lewis Hamilton.

Look. I get it. Mercedes is dominating F1 to a ridiculous extent because it's head-and-shoulders the best operation in the sport, and excellence should be celebrated. But it's also damn boring.

Problem is, I don't know what you do about that. Just be boring I guess.

Because F1 is and always has been a money game, and that's never going to change. The operations with the most money to spread around have always ruled. Back in the day, when Michael Schumacher was winning every race, Ferrari was every bit as dominant as Mercedes is now. A lack of competitive balance has always been the sport's Achilles heel to one degree or another.

And so you've got Mercedes and you've got Ferrari and, to a somewhat lesser extent, you've got Red Bull. And then there's everyone else. And thus has it ever been, with only the names changing through the years.

The difference today is that, if there were dominant teams, the gap between No. 1 and No. 2 was rarely as yawning as it is now. If it's Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull and everyone else, it's more precisely Mercedes and everyone else. Little wonder that Vettel came a trifle unglued after his win was taken away in Canada, switching the "1" and "2" placards placed in front of his and Hamilton's cars, and initially refusing to appear on the podium.

After all, it's not like the scenery was going to change whether he stood up there or not. It was still going to be the same old crowd spraying the champagne around.

In any case, it's on to Austria this week. Your winner will be either Lewis Hamilton or Valtteri Bottas. Enjoy.