Daniel Ricciardo rocked everybody from the upper echelons of Red Bull to the journalists writing that his new contract with the team was a formality with his decision to leave the team for Renault at the end of this year.
The long-term impact of the bombshell will be a fascinating sub-plot to the next two Formula 1 seasons, but it creates huge ripples in the short-term as well.
F1's driver market silly season is usually a complex web that it is traced back to a single strand, but this year's looked different. Below the top teams was an unruly, largely disconnected mess. Several drivers had, and still have, several options. So several outcomes remain possible.