In the "old" days, drivers used to progress through the ranks, moving along the various formulae until they reached Formula One.
Occasionally, a driver might spend only a few races in Formula Two before getting an F1 drive, but the path to the top was fairly clear.
Of course, we don't have F2 any more, but Formula 3000 is sanctioned by the FIA as a full World Championship in its own right, and is seen by many people as being the final stepping stone to F1.
I wonder about that.
Many of the recent arrivals in F1 would seem to indicate that F3000 is no longer the natural, final precursor to F1. Michael Schumacher came from the ranks of the Prototype Sports Cars. Ukyo Katayama and Eddie Irvine came from the Japanese national F3000 series. Mika Hakkinen came from British Formula Three. Jos Verstappen came from German F3. And we have the prospect of Jacques Villeneuve coming from IndyCar. (Oh! By the way, here's a real F1 trivia question for you: what were the three F1 GP that Jacques Villeneuve failed to qualify for?)
Who cares? Does it really matter?
Well, if you're a team boss, it certainly does matter, because you need to keep your eyes open for new, young drivers - fresh blood to fight the battles.
As fans, we should be keeping our eyes open across these same formulae too. Call it "talent-spotting" if you like, but it also helps keep us from looking silly.
Quite frequently, a driver will seemingly pop up from out of the blue, and plonk down in an F1 car. From time to time, he will be a driver who has brought some money to the team. But there are also the drivers who are there not only because they bring in sponsorship, but who can also drive - I mean, REALLY drive. (Hmmm, I think I might return to the subject of "pay drivers" in a future column.)
Look at Schumacher, for example. Coming in from the Mercedes "Youth Team", with no apparent background in open-wheel racing, let alone F3 or F3000, he wouldn't - at first glance - have seemed to be a natural choice. But that first glance has now been proven very wrong, as we all know.
Looking back on it, there should have been a fair deal of comment about Schumacher and his capabilities at the time. Perhaps there should have also been some disparaging comments about his connections with Mercedes. Luckily, there weren't and all has gone very well for him, to say the least!
Think back to some of the other drivers, and some of the comments made about them when they arrived in F1. Perhaps even think about some of the comments you made. To what extent do you think the speaker/ writer actually knew about the driver's background?
To a certain extent F1 fans are extreme snobs. Many of us believe that F1 is the premier form of motorsport in the world. Some of us even think that there is no other form of motorsport other than F1.
There is no reason to be like that. In fact, there could well be an argument that a driver who is successful in other open-wheel categories is going to be a failure in F1. The number of F3000 World Champions who have gone on to be highly successful in F1 are very few and far between - to the extent that no F3000 World Champion has yet been F1 World Champion.
But if it wasn't for all those other forms of motorsport, then think about the capabilities of the drivers coming into F1. You might think that some of the current drivers are real shockers, but imagine what they would be like with no "training".
And then think that the lessons learnt in, say, rallying, may well be very useful to a driver if they ever make it into F1. Okay ... well, perhaps rallying is an extreme example, but I think you might get the idea.
Look at Robby Gordon from IndyCars. His very limited open-wheel experience has not limited his achievements in IndyCar - although I would be among the first to agree that he still has a few rough spots in his style.
To be sure, coming up through the various formulae certainly helps to teach the driver the appropriate skills and capabilities that they'll need when they do get to F1, but it may well be a good idea for a driver to start off in open-wheelers and then to move away to other types of racing.
Do you remember Schumacher's drive at Barcelona in 1994? His car got stuck in fifth gear a third of the way into the race, yet he still managed to finish in second place, a mere 24 seconds behind the winner, Damon Hill. Schumacher said after the race that he was able to keep the car going thanks to the "training" he had got in sports cars.
As good, devoted F1 fans, we should keep our eyes and ears open for the up-and-comers. We shouldn't just wait for the teams to sign up a new driver and then start asking questions about that driver's abilities.
Instead, we should be scanning the result sheets of the various formulae looking for talent.
Who knows, one day we may be at a race meeting, see a prodigious talent, and sign ourselves up as the manager of a future F1 star? And that, surely, must be one of the easiest ways to get to all the GP!
But that's just me.
What were the 3 F1 GP that Jacques Villeneuve failed to qualify for? The Canadian GP of 1981 and 1983, and the USA - Las Vegas - GP of 1981. This particular Jacques Villeneuve was not the same one that won the IndyCar World Championship in 1995. This one was Gilles Villeneuve's elder brother. But still a good trivia question.