Mike Hosking: Is this the chequered flag for Brendon Hartley's Formula 1 career?

If Brendon Hartley's Formula 1 career has come to a conclusion he's done himself proud.

COMMENT: So a couple of hours ago, Brendon Hartley's Formula 1 career might well have come to a conclusion.

Hopefully it didn't, commentators over the weekend suggested the decision hadn't been made. If it is over, that will be me done for the sport.

I never liked it before, and have really only watched because of the New Zealand connection. I watched every race, almost every qualifying session, and most of the practices.

You can see why it's so influential, if you have the time and the inclination and want to immerse yourself in the detail, it's a wonderfully complex sort of event. The technology involved, the skill required, is like little else in sport.

But it's deeply flawed also. There are cars and teams that can never win. Drivers that don't have a chance, it must be a weird experience. And Brendon has been one of those where each weekend if you come 10th you've done brilliantly.

There are too many rules, too many penalties - too many penalties for rules that make no sense. But it is, for now anyway, the pinnacle of the sport and to be among the 20 drivers has put Hartley on the map.

No matter what happens from here on in, saying you were a Formula 1 driver is the domain of a tiny handful and no one can ever take that away from you.

Which brings us to what many would argue is the future of this type of racing: Formula E. E for electric and in this form of the sport we are represented as well by Mitch Evans, and further New Zealand has won the right to host one of the races.

Formula E has the advantage over Formula 1 going forward because the manufacturers are falling over themselves to be involved, given motorsport leads to developments that find their way into regular cars - and there is no bigger development in modern motoring than electricity.

Hosting a race in what is an emerging series that will most likely over take Formula 1 in future years, I would have thought is a no-brainer. New Zealand has long boxed above its weight in motorsport - 110,000 turned out for the Supercars a couple of weekends back.

We know from the Rugby World Cup and the Masters Games and the America's Cup that if you build it they will come. So why wouldn't we get among not only a major international sporting event, but an event that transmits a modern message around technology and the environment, not to mention one that brings in millions.

As in most of these things, the Government needs to cough up and get behind it. Why wouldn't they? They handed out $40 million on Friday for a train. Why not $14m for a motor race. This would appear to be a golden opportunity that we would be idiots not to grab.