From top to bottom, Formula One is hopelessly in denial. The 80th birthday celebrations for Sir Jackie Stewart on Sunday offered a reminder that this can be, at its best, a great and noble enterprise, a platform for some of the bravest feats ever produced in the name of sport. But the feeble non-event of a French Grand Prix that ensued did a disservice to the very concept of motor racing.

Lewis Hamilton’s lights-to-flag victory here, his sixth win in eight races so far this season, was a spectacle that served nobody outside Mercedes: not the organisers, not the fans in half-empty stands, and not the TV viewers, who in the UK have already been forced to buy satellite subscriptions for the privilege of watching enervating processions.

Defenders of F1 claim that every sport has its longueurs, that football has its share of drab goalless draws. But the problem is that grimly one-sided grands prix are becoming the norm, not the exception. Just as surely as the sun rose over Provence, Hamilton rounded the first corner of Circuit Paul Ricard in the lead and tore away for 53 blissfully untroubled laps. Those recalling a similar degree of dominance by McLaren, who achieved 11 consecutive wins in 1988, or by Michael Schumacher, who was the champion in 2002 by July, miss one crucial piece of context: that Mercedes’ supremacy has lasted for the entire turbo-hybrid era. This year, they are all but certain to complete a sixth consecutive double of drivers’ and constructors’ titles. That is unprecedented.