Sitting in the pre-weekend Azerbaijan Grand press conference, Oscar Piastri was asked about how it felt inside McLaren to be on the verge of securing a second consecutive constructors’ championship, but this time with seven races still to go. Last year it was only clinched at the final race.

“There’s much more of a sense of inevitability about it this year,” he said. “Which is an amazing position to be in. It’s a testament to all the hard work from everyone at the team. And, you know, I’m the lucky guy that gets to drive the car at the end of the day. So, yes. A testament to everyone’s hard work.”

While that underplays Piastri’s great personal performances this year, two places along from him sat Pierre Gasly. Unbeknown to Pierre at the time, he was responsible in 2022 for Piastri’s sliding doors moment, one which took him from the potential purgatory of third driver in a uncompetitive team to a glittering career in F1’s best car and, quite feasibly, a world title.

Part-way through ‘22 Gasly had been signed by Alpine on a long contract, to run from ’23, an agreement that wasn’t reported for several months. This would have come as something of a disappointment to 2021 F2 champion Piastri, at the time Alpine’s third driver and hoping for a promotion to an F1 race seat. Fernando Alonso was in the other car and although his contract ran only to the end of ’22, surely it was only a matter of ‘when’, not ‘if’, he renewed.

With Alonso in one car and Gasly signed for a long time in the other, Piastri’s career was in danger of stalling. He could so easily have fallen through the cracks in the way that Aston Martin third driver Felipe Drugovich – who succeeded Piastri as F2 champion – has done subsequently.

Quite why Renault automotive boss Luca de Meo and Alpine team boss Laurent Rossi were in such a hurry to sign Gasly on an expensive long-term contract when the team had the immense promise of Piastri already on its books is unclear. Probably because a Frenchman in a French-marketed team seemed a good fit.

Why those same people were playing hardball with Alonso on renewing his contract on the grounds that he was asking for a three-year deal is also puzzling. They felt it was too long for a driver of his age, thereby insulting him and giving him cause to look around. Rossi felt certain Alonso had no realistic alternative to sign a shorter contract if he wished to continue. He did: Sebastian Vettel was about to retire. Which Alonso knew and the Renault bosses did not. He’d already been sounded out by Aston Martin, a team absolutely prepared to give him the commitment of a long-term deal – and with some very exciting plans in the pipeline.