The 2021 driver-market silly season became a whole lot less exciting over the winter as Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc pledged themselves to Red Bull and Ferrari on long deals that will take them well into the new decade.
Apart from the timing of the announcements - Leclerc's just as most people were sitting down with a calculator to figure out how long to blast the Christmas turkey, Verstappen's just as they were figuring out how to shed the excess poundage from all that feasting - it was the duration of those contracts that intrigued.
As a driver, unless your dad owns the team, you'll feel your manager has earned their percentage if they can draw up a deal for one or two years plus options for more. Short contracts militate against drivers slipping into cruise-and-collect mode, especially if their team-mate is beatable.