Is it Hamilton, Alonso, Räikkönen, Massa or Button? Everyone has their own view on who the best F1 driver is, and has formed the basis for many a night-long conversation for countless fans worldwide since the dawn of racing. One might look at statistics, driving style, performance under pressure or comparison to a team-mate for deciding who the best driver on the grid is.

But now a website has been launched which claims to have a magical formula to show just who the greatest is. This website not only compares drivers from Formula One, but also from rallying, NASCAR and IRL in the United States, junior formulae such as F3, GP2 and even touring cars. Backed by the usually reliable folk at Autosport.com, the Castrol Driver Rankings website claims to be able to calculate who the best performing driver of the past 12 months is, thanks to each individual drivers' results and a handful of motor racing 'experts'.

Each drivers' results from qualifying sessions and races are taken into account, along with other data such as laps led, positions gained and fastest lap, before every driver's score is then weighted according to the category of racing. Each category's weight has been kept secret, known only to the experts that devised the supposedly 'highly-advanced technology'.

According to the ranking, Jenson Button is the best driver on the planet at the minute, followed by Sebastian Vettel, WRC's Sébastien Loeb and Rubens Barrichello. Consecutive four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson is ranked just fifth, while IndyCar's Ryan Briscoe is bizzarely ranked sixth, ahead of two-time champions Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon.

But having neglected the first and most important rule in making comparisons to make their "most objective and expansive measurement of driving talent across all disciplines of motorsport" any way believable, Castrol and Autosport have added nothing to the debate of who the greatest driver really is. In school we all learn to compare like with like. It's useless trying to compare a penguin with a light bulb, as it is to compare F1 with WRC, or any other series for that matter.

Such comparisons can be made with greater credibility in the worlds of football, tennis or golf simply because all players play the same game, structured by the same rules. The same cannot be said for F1 and WRC, or F3 and NASCAR. If Button is the top-ranked driver, does that mean he is the best driver of a GP2 car, say? Or would he be able to beat Jimmie Johnson in a NASCAR Sprint Cup head-to-head?

Apart from the fact that the rankings ignore the influence of car performance on a drivers' results, it also overlooks the fact that each series requires a significantly different driving style to the next. Juan Pablo Montoya was a title challenger in F1, but has thus far been unable to topple Johnson in NASCAR, while Sébastien Bourdais was unbeatable in Champ Car (now IndyCar) but was overshadowed by rookie Sébastien Buemi in F1 this year.

The only way the Castrol rankings could be made any less credible is if they threw MotoGP into the mix.

And one final question to you all: If you had a Formula One team, would you rather employ Alonso or Trulli? Well, Autosport think Trulli is 5% better. Perhaps, in the vin yard.