Having been away from home for much of the last month, it was time this week for a few grandparental pleasures. After the F1 engine announcements, there were inevitable grumblings from the manufacturers and some worthless sabre-rattling, so I enjoyed a day out looking at the back end of ostriches, mean-looking leopards and lazy lions at a safari park, with a young lady who pretends that the cupboard is an aeroplane and flies to Canada in three minutes, complete with safety demonstrations.

Back in the real world, there will be more grumbling next week when F1 starts getting serious about cost-cutting. This is not new. Ferrari built an Indycar back in the 1980s to try to convince F1 that it was serious about quitting the sport. But no-one believed them then and no-one is going to believe them now. If Ferrari is mad enough to leave F1 it will get what it deserves. If that sounds harsh it is because the team has been spoilt for too long and should accept to be treated fairly, rather than always demanding an unfair advantage. Half the world supports this supposed mystique, but it makes no sense at all. It’s like supporting a boxer who insists that his opponents have one hand tied behind their backs but still wants people to think he is the best. The truth is that the team cannot even win when it has such advantages, so one does wonder why the fans care more about the brand than they do about the moribund (and wasted) Bugatti or the busted flushes like BRM or Lotus.

At the moment Ferrari lacks pretty much everything that is worth supporting, most of all charm. Sergio Marchionne may be a magician in the car world, although one wonders if his house of cards will withstand a stiff breeze, but when it comes to racing he has yet to be convincing. Under his watch he has allowed the Ferrari F1 team to become aloof and arrogant in the presumed hope that it will perform better if it wastes no time on the media. Good for them. They have got a little closer, but now have less sympathy in their failure. It is getting towards 10 years since the team won an F1 title and there is no reason why they should get advantages that other great teams do not get.

If they fail, they fail. That’s the law of the jungle. Ask a lion.