Ian Parkes: Latest version of an enduring formula

SO here we are. We have had to wait an additional two weeks for the new Formula 1 season in the wake of the postponement of the Bahrain Grand Prix, but now it is finally upon us.

The past four months, since an historic evening in Abu Dhabi when Sebastian Vettel secured a place in the sport's record books by becoming the youngest world champion in F1 history, have passed like the blur of a car itself hurtling down a straight at 200 miles per hour. Blink, and you might have missed it.

Now we stand on the brink of new dreams, new aspirations, new ideas and new technologies, all looking to fuse together over the next nine months to ultimately yield motor sport's grandest prize.

Sure, we have the World Rally and World Touring Car Championship; in the United States they have IRL, incorporating the renowned Indy 500, as well as NASCAR, while in Australia there is the famed Bathurst event. But none of those compare to Formula 1, an enduring, exhausting duel spread over four continents and 18 countries and watched by a global audience of 350 million that is only surpassed by the football World Cup and the Olympics.

To think that not so very long ago, F1 was a sport that lacked definitive direction, was run by mechanics who doubled as team owners, and there were a handful of deaths every season. Of course, it had its appeal, how could it not?

As any sport has evolved, so too has F1, more perhaps given the range of technologies and innovations witnessed down the years.

Team owners are less mechanics and more beancounters these days as they take stock of every single pound or euro, be it from sponsors, promoters, television companies, and not forgetting the prize pot. The most sophisticated cars, resplendent with an array of electronics and gizmos that would baffle some of the brightest brains, now take to the grid.

At least in this day and age, when drivers settle themselves down into the cockpit of a car, there is a degree of safety in knowing they are surrounded by some of the most intricate crash structures available.

Yes, there are still accidents, but mercifully there has not been a death in an F1 race for 17 years when the late, great Ayrton Senna lost his life in the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola.

Thankfully, not any more as motor spot's world governing body, the FIA, executed a vow to become pioneers in the field of safety, and their efforts have to be applauded.There are some things, however, that never change such as the grand old master himself, F1's supremo and commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone.

Even now at 80, when many men that age have lost all sharpness in both mind and body, Ecclestone's astute eye for a deal, to extract every last unit of currency from whomever he is negotiating with, has barely wavered.

So there we have it, F1, 2011 style - a highly sophisticated, technologically advanced, predominantly safe sport whose global appeal is now such that royalty and A-list celebrities are just as happy to avidly view a race as your average petrolhead.

Is it any wonder that this Sunday, and the season-opening race in Melbourne's Albert Park, simply cannot come quick enough?