THE TRACK at Istanbul is one of the best in the world, but there is something missing. The Turkish Grand Prix is like a holiday camp off-season; things are cooler, quieter and with no real buzz. The absence of the Super Aguri team, which went into administration last week, hasn’t helped.

Losing Super Aguri is a tragedy, from the point of view of the team and its employees, many of whom were based in Oxfordshire, and for Formula One as a whole. The team did an extraordinary job on what, by F1 standards, is pocket money, from when it was created at the 11th hour just before the 2006 season with help from Honda.

The highlight of Super Aguri’s short history came in Canada last year when Takuma Sato passed Ralf Schumacher and Fernando Alonso to finish sixth. It was a team of courage and integrity that punched above its weight and received a lot of admiration. Their collapse will have ramifications for the British motorsport industry because it is reasonable to assume that UK suppliers will lose business and gain some bad debt.

It’s also bad news for F1. From a media perspective we need such teams. Yes, they are there to populate the grid, but they are more than that. There was something exciting about the David and Goliath storyline they brought. At this track last year Anthony Davidson drove one of the qualifying laps of the year to put Super Aguri 11th on the grid.

There are potentially 12 two-car teams filling 24 slots on the grid, and but only 20 are now taken up. Unless all the franchises are sold, none of them has any value. The situation isn’t helped by the fact that another team, Toro Rosso, is up for sale. Why would anyone want to buy teams such as these? They are a much less attractive proposition now that they will be forced to become full and independent constructors from 2010, unable to run cars largely provided by another team.

What would a buyer of Super Aguri get? Basically some obsolete cars and parts, secondhand trucks and any residual skilled workforce with associated obligations. Having missed a race, any share of the significant television money earned this season has gone, too. There is no value in the business, only debt.

F1 has driven itself between a rock and a hard place on customer cars. It has done a U-turn, in that “B” teams were initially part of the governing body’s vision of the sport, allowing the likes of Super Aguri and Toro Rosso to come into existence. Then it all somehow changed and in the process the Prodrive McLaren deal was torpedoed, largely by key stakeholders such as Sir Frank Williams and Force India.

Williams runs a team with more than 600 staff, two wind-tunnels and all the associated resources and overheads of being a constructor. Williams’s objection was valid: why should another team of 50 people be able to lease ready-built cars for a fraction of his commitment, especially when, if they beat him on the track, they then claim some of the F1 revenue he needs to remain competitive?

Force India are driving a legal arbitration process to clear up the situation and elbow some breathing space for the smaller constructors.

It’s a longstanding foundation stone of F1 that teams build their own cars as they unleash about 200 designers and technicians on the same set of rules to create a cutting-edge grid of differing vehicles that still perform to within a 2% difference from fastest to slowest.

Crucially, though, the sport also needs its grids to be fully populated. And from a media perspective, the little teams are an important part of the story. They bring depth and different facets to the storyline. If these teams go, who will be at the back of the grid? With the loss of Super Aguri, mighty factory teams such as Honda, Renault and Toyota are two slots closer to the back. They cannot afford to be there - Red Bull and Williams neither. With a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars a year, it’s not an option.

Next year we have significant regulation changes such as new aerodynamics and slick tyres, which will ramp up the budget needed to be competitive. This will widen the gulf between the “haves” and “have nots”. My concern is that sponsors or manufacturers might use recent negative events surrounding F1, combined with the economic downturn, as a reason to excuse themselves from the sport.

About 50 F1 teams have gone out of existence in the past two decades, including evocative names such as Lotus, Brabham, Tyrrell and Ligier, so what’s the big deal about Super Aguri?

I see their demise as symptomatic of a more serious malaise. If and when the big teams go, what do you need to keep the grid populated? Teams such as Super Aguri, that’s what. Not by coincidence, Bernie Ecclestone has a full grid of GP2 teams supporting the European grands prix; without doubt a few of these are run by future F1 team bosses. However, the jump from being a £3m GP2 team to a £200m F1 constructor is an impossible distance. We need active and viable customer teams, albeit with greater financial advantages for the constructors.

If the number of cars were to drop to 16 or 18, many of the grandee teams would have to run a third car. Not only would this be expensive, it would also be another impediment to the competitiveness and viability of smaller teams.