In his excellent tribute to the late Sir Jack Brabham - a link to which was subsequently re-tweeted by his son David Brabham - Mike Lawrence pointed out that in addition to his success in F1, the Australian also enjoyed victories in F1 and Sports Cars. Indeed, not that long ago, when drivers weren't contesting the Formula One World Championship, their weekends 'off' were spent racing all manner of machines all over the world.

Indeed, sadly, it is how we lost many of the sport's legends, including Jim Clark who was killed in an F2 race at Hockenheim on the same day that some of his F1 rivals were contesting the BOAC 500 Sports Car race at Brands Hatch.

Speaking at today's press conference, Kimi Raikkonen, who, during his two years away from F1 tried his hand at WRC and NASCAR, admitted he would have enjoyed racing in the era when racers were free to race.

"Obviously these days are different than the days that they used to race and they could do different categories, different races," he said. "It would be very nice if they would be able to do different things at the same time and different races and try different things more.

"But the problem is everything gets so much more expensive these days and obviously people are more scared that you get hurt that they try to limit everything that you do. It's a shame because I think it would be more fun for everybody and all sports would also benefit from it, and F1. It would be nice to do stuff like they did."

Chris Balfe