It is that time of year when there are lists. The editor and I discussed a Top Ten Drivers of 2011, but he wasn't keen on compiling one and I was positively against it. I have no problem with a Top Ten as a starting point for a pub debate, but to publish one as an editorial feature is another matter and, besides, I am not competent to do so.

Thirty years ago, no problem and I did produce such lists back then. As season followed season, I felt less comfortable and eventually gave up. It was not advancing senility, it was the changing nature of the demands on a driver.

Consider this one fact, thirty years ago timing at a typical Formula One test session was done with stop watches. Before long it was done electronically and timed to within thousands of a second, a fraction of time which has no meaning in everyday life.

Some will tell you that there was a time when a Formula One driver made a greater input to a car's performance than today, but it is more complicated than pointing out how much quicker a Moss or a Fangio was over his team-mates. Cars and engines were not made to the fine tolerances they are today and a team leader got the best kit. At Vanwall, Moss could drive all the cars and chose his favoured chassis, engine and gearbox.

Further down the line, it was widely rumoured that, at teams whose name ended with a vowel, a driver's wife or girl friend could influence the allocation of equipment. I have no idea what this means.

With computerised machining and all the rest, drivers today receive identical cars. It is only comparatively recently that a driver's greatest rival has become his team-mate because it was acknowledged that few teams could prepare two cars to an identical standard. When Senna vetoed Warwick's move to Lotus in 1986, it was not because he feared Derek's speed, it was because he knew that Lotus could not service joint number one drivers.

Senna had no problem joining Alain Prost at McLaren because McLaren was, with Williams, the first F1 team to bring identical cars to the line.

If you were driving a Maserati 250F say, your greatest enemy was heat, particularly in the brakes. Today's driver has to manage heat because if he has not heat in his tyres and brakes, he is not able to generate the downforce to allow him to corner at speed.

One reason why some of us are fascinated by historic racing and sports cars is that they hold no mysteries. If we can drive a Ford Fiesta, we can drive a Vanwall or a Lister-Jaguar. We may not be quick, but we can drive around a circuit. By contrast, nobody without the right background experience, can simply climb aboard a current F1 car and make it work. Much of the technique of driving a current F1 car is counter-intuitive to regular driving and most of us would have a problem even driving one in a straight line, if we could get it off the line in the first place.