When I looked at one of my favourite websites on Wednesday morning, Has Maldonado Crashed Today? I was informed that the enigma from Venezuelan had, in fact, not had a prang for 59 days, four hours and 36 minutes.

“Nope,” said the website, answering its own question. “The world is safe for another day.” Pastor Maldonado, I was further informed, had not crashed since the first lap of the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on 15 March.

Maldonado, who actually won a race once, in Barcelona in 2012, is a driver capable of alarming speed but he has crashed more times than your first laptop. I have always felt that he must have taken driving lessons from Toad of Toad Hall in the wonderful Wind in the Willows.

If you found yourself without transport in one of the most isolated places on the planet, McMurdo Station in Antarctica, say, or Ittoqqortoormiit in Greenland, and Mr Maldonado pulled over and offered you a lift you might be tempted to accept, but the sensible option would be to present him with a thin smile and say: “Thanks, Pastor, but I’d prefer to walk.”

Pastor Maldonado of Venezuela and Lotus is capable of alarming speed – and the occasional prang. Photograph: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

But the fact that the Lotus man has actually manoeuvred his way through four grands prix without coming to a crumpled standstill begs a straightforward question: is Formula One a bit too easy? It is a pertinent question too, as the teams prepare for a get-together on Thursday which will discuss F1’s future.

The meeting of F1’s strategy group will include the six biggest teams, as well as the sport’s chief executive, Bernie Ecclestone, the governing body – the FIA – and possibly Donald Mackenzie, the co-chairman and co-founder of CVC Capital Partners, the biggest shareholders in the sport.

Thursday’s meeting will take place against a background of mounting concern, with declining sponsorship and falling live and television audiences. Also, most of the teams are struggling to come to terms with the colossal cost of just taking part.

But the crux of the debate, as the sport decides on what turn it will take in 2017, is its decline as a spectacle. Some of the racing in the past year has been memorable but there have also been too many drab events and two of the opening five races this season have been very disappointing.

As well as being quieter, the cars are now, generally, a few seconds slower than they were a decade ago – and this in a sport that is meant to be at the cutting edge of new technology.

David Coulthard, whose long F1 career ended in 2008, said on Tuesday: “There was a time not so very long ago when F1 was physically and mentally exhausting for the drivers. That is no longer the case.

“For any normal human being, the cars would still be impossibly tough to drive. But F1 drivers are finely honed athletes of the highest calibre and the current cars simply do not stretch them.

“When you look back and see the likes of Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell struggling to stand up after races, it’s not that they were not in good shape, the cars were simply very tough to drive and they were challenged the whole way.”

There are a number of reasons for this. The sensitivity of the tyres means that the drivers must look after their rubber. The cars are also more sluggish these days – at least at the start of the race – because they are carrying a full fuel load following the cancellation of refuelling. They have also been slowed for safety reasons, and there is not enough overtaking, despite the artificial aid of DRS.

But there appears little appetite for radical change within the sport and Ecclestone’s call for the return of the old V8s and for the introduction of 1,000hp power units that are “more difficult to drive” has had little response.

Jonathan Neale, McLaren’s racing chief operations officer, said: “Personally, I think it would be foolish to mess around with the immense amount of good work that has been done on the power units.”

Paddy Lowe, the Mercedes technical director, added: “I don’t think we need to run around thinking we have to do drastic things.” Meanwhile, the head of performance at Williams, Rob Smedley, said: “I think we should leave it alone.”

So perhaps we should look on Pastor Maldonado in a fresh light and better appreciate the enthusiastic contribution he makes to the sport’s entertainment.

Just don’t get in his way, that’s all.