It’s only just occurred to me how insane it is that the three brand new teams to Formula 1 this season had the same testing opportunities as the established teams, one of which has been doing it for 60 years.

David Coulthard, in his Red Bull Racing-branded Telegraph column, wrote the following about the achievement of Lotus finishing the race:

“Surely that is a minimum expectation? That said I was impressed by the commitment of all three new teams.”

He’s right: we should expect teams to be able to reach the end of the race. But couldn’t they have been given a bit more opportunity to get to that level of reliability?

In an ideal world, the new teams wouldn’t, at this point in the season, need more testing. But they do. Who does it benefit to see them continue to fail to finish races? No-one. So give them a chance: let them do a bit more testing, get on top of reliability, and give us a meaningfully expanded grid.