Poor Jules Bianchi. The odds against this immensely liked driver going off at the same spot in Suzuka as Adrian Sutil must have been phenomenal. The weather had just turned for the worst. The signs are at least encouraging post operation but having seen the footage of his ‘off’ Jules is truly lucky to be alive.

And now news that former F1 driver Andrea de Cesaris has been killed in a bike crash in Rome, aged only 55. Tragic.

In 1982, aged 22, de Cesaris became the then youngest driver to start a Grand Prix from the front of the grid after he took his sole career pole, the same year a young Clive Couldwell first started reporting on F1 – in the business and technology sense, that is.