"Our Survey Says..."

There can be few things in this godforsaken life more unwelcome than random market surveys... Explosive diarrhoea perhaps. Accidentally slamming your bits in a filing cabinet, or fracturing your coccyx. Or possibly the idea of ITV's James Allen following you around with a microphone, commentating on your entire life. But probably not much else.

One exception though, would have to be a survey about your life's passion, which purports to be useful and interested in your opinion but is nothing of the sort. Say hello to the FIA/AMD 2006 Survey of F1 fans.

At such a crucial and pivotal time in the sport's history you'd have thought a definitive and official survey of fans might weigh heavily on matters of purpose and principle; on the sport itself. But no. What we got was a succession of questions about podcasts and mobile phones.

Whether we download boredomcasts of the latest joyless, life-sapping F1 processions onto our watches or whatever is frankly irrelevant compared to whether we want overtaking and thrills and racecraft, or whether we should be allowed to remove Max Mosley by popular vote.

Given that last year's survey unsurprisingly identified the Spa circuit as a massive favourite amongst F1 fans, you'd have thought any responsible and responsive sporting body would not then allow that circuit to be thrown off the following year's calendar.

But you'd be reckoning without the spectacular ability of F1 to shoot itself in both feet whilst stabbing itself in the back (and probably a few other self-destructive cliches on top of that). So we lost Spa and yet another lesson from the 2005 survey went unlearned.

And what's this fixation with mobile phones? - they're for ringing people (or subjecting them to craptacularly annoying music on public transport if you live where I do, apparently) - not for watching GPs: can you honestly say there's any value in pratting around with mobile when they can't even get TV right?

If I'm going to be asked about how I want to watch F1, I want to be able to give answers like "in full, no adverts", "on a dedicated interactive TV channel", "all race weekend", and "on the edge of my seat, which currently isn't possible thanks to you idiots."

Sadly though, the FIA/AMD survey - as it was last year - appears to be little more than an exercise in getting the likes of you and me to tick boxes once they've already decided what outcome they want.

If you filled in the survey, then what can I say? that's 15 perfectly good minutes of your life you won't ever be getting back. It may seem cynical to take such a dim view when our opinions are being asked for, but when everything's as irrelevant or loaded as this survey suggests, then surely it means that the FIA take an equally dim view of us.