Firstly apologies if this is a bit contrived, but Racing topics of conversation tend to dry up when no-one is racing.....

I think we all agree that money plays a huge part in every sport. It pays for stadiums, player's wages, coach's wages. The people/teams with the most money are, 9 times from 10, going to be the most successful.

And out of every sport, motor racing is one of the most reliant on the cash coming into the teams. The very nature of the sport, especially the top echelons, means that the boundries are always being pushed (or should that be broken). And to push boundries you need money for R&D - building better facilities, or more people to make tiny alterations to bits of the car only they know exist.

Now, being realistic getting rid of this money is never going to happen. But is money a good or bad thing.

In my opinion money is not all bad, but as soon as you notice it, it becomes bad. I promise that made some sort of sense once. Take NASCAR. Hendrick has more money than many small countries, and don't we know it. This extra cash gives them the ability to hire the best drivers (and Junior), do more development - the fact that they started miles ahead of everyone else in the COT stakes proves that. And the domination this has given him is killing the sport. Sport is built on unpredictability, but there were times last season when a Hendrick win was all but certain - a fact that was a big part, if not the only part that meant the chase was an enormous turn off.

There is even more money in F1. The teams with manufacturer backing have gigantic budgets. Many hold Ferrari the chief offenders for having the money to dominate the sport (especially in the Schumacher era), but no-one minds that Toyota have, historically, had the biggest budgets in F1 since their entrance into the sport. Why? Because you don't notice it. The only real sign that Toyota have had a huge budget in recent years hace been the big names in the cockpit, not the big numbers on the standings. At the other end of the grid is another money-over-matter incident.

The Jordan-Midland-Spyker-Force India incident. I am all for plucky private teams trying to make it in F1. In my opinion this is one factor that made the F1 of old so exciting (and dare I say romantic). For every Ferrari, or Renault, there was a team run by an eccentric millionaire, with a love of the sport, rather than a love of technology and selling a marques relevant road cars. However, we've recently seen the wrong end of this. How is a team meant to survive when they are basically treated as a businessman's play thing. Jordan were a quality team, with the necessary eccentric Irishman at the helm. They were then brought by a Russian/Canadian businessman. He made Narain Kathakeyan (sp?) an F1 driver. Not because he'd swept all before in feeder series, but because he represented the Indian market the businessman felt was so important. But he got bored and sold out to Dutch Sportscar maker Spyker. They had good results - driver Adrian Sutil ran the fastest practice time in a wet Monaco session. They also scored the first point since the Jordan days. Things were looking up. But they got bored, so they sold out. And the team became Force India.

Here there may be light at the end of the tunnel. Yes there is money backing the team, but in a recent interview the new team co-owner Vijay Mallya said that money wasn't driving choices, but the long term future of the team. They had the choice to use the money. Big name drivers Ralf Schumacher and Giancarlo Fisichella were among those they could have picked (going down the Toyota) but instead they intend on keeping Sutil and choosing the other driver due to the experience he brings to the young team, not the sponsorship money.

I wish Force India (despite having the worst team name in history) the best of luck.