A few hours after the end of the Australian Grand Prix, I went down to the Toyota garage in search of Mike Gascoyne. Open and forthright, he's always good value after a race, whatever the result. On this occasion, Ralf Schumacher's unexpected third place, a result that exceeded even Toyota's expectations, guaranteed some lively conversation, and he'd already had a few visitors.
The result appeared to have gone some way to making up for the disaster that was Bahrain. On that occasion, Toyota had struggled with the sort of tyre temperature problems that hit everyone else in Australia. Mike was certainly upbeat, and if there was some serious aggravation going on behind the scenes, he didn't show it.
And yet a couple of days later came rumours of his departure, followed by an official statement to the effect that he'd been "suspended indefinitely". There's no way back from a phrase like that; it can only mean that we won't be seeing him in a Toyota shirt again.