Bernie Ecclestone will be delighted with how the 2012 grand prix campaign has commenced.

Five races, five different winners, nary a sense of the processional path to triumph which epitomised Sebastian Vettel's march to the world title last season, plus incidents galore, including a fire in the Williams garage cutting short their celebrations yesterday, and the emergence of a new breed of contenders, including Pastor Maldonado, who surged to his maiden GP victory – and the first for Williams since 2004 – in Barcelona yesterday.

From a neutral perspective, the Venezuelan driver deserved to have entered the chronicles by becoming the first person from his country to take the chequered flag in F1 history. So why was there a nagging unease about the fashion in which the race unfolded?

Partially, it sprang from the words of David Coulthard as Maldonado tore up the form book on a weekend when Frank Williams was celebrating his 70th birthday, the Scottish pundit describing the outcome as "like something from a Hollywood film".

To the extent that F1's new raft of regulations have transformed the action into choreographed mayhem, Coulthard had a point, though one has to wonder whether any activity which is so dependent on tyre strategy, fuel consumption and the split-second precision of pit crews deserves to be regarded as a true sport or is better viewed as a reality TV version of a computer game.

Unarguably, the rule changes have levelled the playing field, to such an extent that Saturday qualifying has turned into a phoney war, where some of the participants seem more concerned with keeping their powder dry for the main event than finishing as far up the grid as possible. And, even if the consequence has been a narrowing of the gap between the leading organisations and second-ranked marques, it's debatable whether this has pushed standards upwards or simply turned every GP into a giant lottery, where the smartest strategy trumps individual excellence.

Of course, in any sphere where humans are pushing themselves to the limit, there will be moments to thrill the most jaded palate, and the style in which Maldonado wrested the initiative away from Fernando Alonso provided a genuine adrenaline rush. But, none the less, there were myriad other parts of the race where so many different competitors were trying such an abundance of diverse stratagems, allied to the likes of Vettel and Felipe Massa incurring drive-through penalties for a variety of offences, that it was easy to forget that the aim of a grand prix driver is to get from the start to the finish as quickly as possible. That basic ambition has been replaced by teams tying themselves in knots, attempting to second-guess what their rivals might do, instead of concentrating on their own tactics, and Red Bull, in particular, have paid the price, with Vettel relinquishing much of the poise he exhibited in 2011.

In this environment, mistakes and buck-passing are inevitable and Michael Schumacher was quick to condemn Bruno Senna after the pair crashed out of contention, when the collision was clearly the German's fault. So, too, Paul di Resta, who had impressed in previous outings, looked worryingly out of sorts and was eclipsed by his Force India colleague, Nico Hulkenberg. As for Massa, well if he is driving the same Ferrari car as Alonso, then it can only be a matter of time before he is hoicked out of the cockpit and replaced with another better alternative. But who? The fact is, nobody has mastered the fresh demands of F1, and that scenario might continue for the foreseeable future.

Doubtless, Bernie and the petrol-head platoon will be pleased with that state of affairs. The rest of us might wonder whether the spectacle is closer to Robot Wars than real racing.