Force India, nee Jordan, Midland and Spyker, is another tale of hardship in relation to Formula One's inability to create a sustainable business for anyone other than the top two thirds of the grid. When EJ finally had to throw the towel in, Alex Shnaider came on board only to find out that the old adage that to make a small fortune in F1 you first had to start with a big one, remains true. At least for the backmarkers. And Spyker? Well, they came, they saw and they ran away as fast as they could - this was no place for a low volume sports car company.

VJ Mallya is clearly determined to harness India's growing industrial might in his vision of a nationally-identified Formula One team, and perhaps he stands a better chance than most given he happens to already own one of the country's leading businesses and probably knows everyone worth knowing in Indian business circles.

Two causes for concern here; firstly that companies may not rush to subsume their brands to a team dominated by Mr Mallya's Kingfisher brand or other businesses, secondly that national teams are a tough sell in the global business of Formula One. International companies like a global identity, not a national one. If you want to know how easy it is to create a national team, ask Alain Prost. Once SEITA (Gauloises), Peugeot, Total and Alcatel took off, the cupboard was bare.

Given all the above, I think it is very important that Formula One takes the issue of how to sustain all the teams and tackles it head on. Better still, finds a way to make it possible for new teams to come in. Asking the existing top ten, now the only ten, teams to agree to an eleventh, twelfth or thirteenth team coming into Formula One is going to be greeted with silence. Why would they want it given that only the top ten (again, now only ten…) benefit from a share in the vital TV and licensing revenue?

The problem is that, with Super Aguri gone, someone else is now going to be last each weekend. Force India or Toro Rosso. And that makes it very hard for them to sell sponsorship, or sell the dream, on top of which they don't get much TV coverage. Sponsors like to be associated with success, or the possibility of success, and certainly they want exposure. With none of those ingredients available to the chaps down the back, what exactly do they have to sell?

When I first went to a Formula One race working for a team, Jordan, at Phoenix in 1991, there were 18 teams in Formula One - the era of pre-qualifying. Some of them were a shambles, and I completely agree with Bernie Ecclestone's quest to rid the sport of teams that add nothing to the show and in fact detract from it. Ten teams, however, is too few.

With 18 Formula One races on the calendar, the prospects for some of the new markets ever having a driver in Formula One have been diminished by the fact that there are now only 20 race seats available. Such is the relatively slow turnover of drivers that countries such as China, Korea, India, UAE, Bahrain and Singapore will now have to wait many, many years before they can find a berth for their talented sons - let alone a daughter which is surely the next taboo to be broke.

Fewer drivers means fewer fans, fewer media, fewer opportunities for Formula One to expand its global footprint.

The advent of car company-owned and run teams has also diminished the pool of hard edged sponsorship sales talent in the sport. Gone are the days when, unless you filled your car with sponsors, the bills would not get paid. The owners now take care of this in most cases.

Is that healthy? Some, I am sure, will say that to have 10 teams fully funded and not about to fall over because their owners will always make up the annual shortfall is a good thing. That's fine so long as the owners have the capability and interest to pay the team's bills. But what happens when the owners falter or, worse still, have to pull out of Formula One. Who, for example, would take on Toyota's massive factory and staff overheads in Cologne?

In the days when the Team Principal was the man with his name over the door of the shop, commercial reality mean that they would wake up each morning with deals to be done, sponsors to be landed, finance to be found. How many of the car manufacturer team principals do that now?

Somewhere between the extremes of private team owners unable to find the money to go racing and corporations dominating the sport to the extent that it is over-reliant on their continued involvement, lies a happier medium. In all the discussions about cost reducing technical regulations and so on, I have never seen a financial target - and there really ought to be one.

In order to attract the next generation of team owners, and indeed provide for the continuation of the remaining 10 teams even if their corporate owners bail out, I would propose the following;

1. The TV revenue should be shared among all teams, down to 12th, so that in effect there are two slots remaining for new teams. In the event that there is no 11th or 12th team, those monies go into a cumulative Team Fund to be used to rescue any teams who subsequently fall on hard times.

2. Customer cars should be permitted, with a specific price on chassis, engine and technical support such that the smaller teams could operate to a USD$60m budget annually. Such teams would only be awarded half-points towards the Constructors World Championship.