On previous occasions when a team has won the world constructors’ title but not the drivers’, it’s usually been a low-key consolation prize, one barely noticed. Think of Ferrari in 2008, having seen its driver Felipe Massa lose the drivers’ title on the last corner of the season. A second consecutive constructors’ title for the team wasn’t the big story. Even in 1999 when Ferrari won its first constructors’ title for 16 years, the story was all about how Eddie Irvine’s bid to be the injured Michael Schumacher’s title-winning reserve had fallen short. For the third successive year a Ferrari driver had gone to the final round for a title show-down and come off second-best; that was the overwhelming emotion there at the time. Williams surely appreciated the financial implications of winning the constructors’ title in 1994, but it wasn’t the time for a celebration in light of Damon Hill losing the title to a Schumacher-induced collision in Adelaide.

But it was different in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago as McLaren sealed its first constructors’ championship in 26 years. Partly because its driver Lando Norris fell out of championship contention two races earlier in Las Vegas, so that disappointment had passed, but also because of what it represented. Not only was it the first title success for the third evolution of the team which has carried this name, but the back-from-the-brink aspect it represented probably makes it an even bigger deal than a driver’s title would have been.

If we go back to the same race six years ago, Fernando Alonso (having his last race for McLaren before leaving F1) was the quicker McLaren driver in qualifying – 15th on the grid at 2.9sec adrift of pole position. The other car, driven by Stoffel Vandoorne, went out in Q1. Towards the end of the race Alonso was giving vain chase to Kevin Magnussen’s Haas for 10th. His engineer Will Joseph tried encouraging him with, “Come on Fernando, there could be a point on offer here.” Alonso responded with, “But I’ve scored 1800 points!” Nonetheless, with three laps to go, realising he wasn’t catching the Haas, Alonso missed out the chicane, staying foot hard down. He did it again on the remining two laps, just a bit of last race mischief, for which he was duly penalised – as if he cared. He did a few donuts at the end of the race in celebration of his own career, not knowing then that he would be back a couple of years later.

But that was as much celebrating as McLaren was able to do that evening. Having surrendered its works Hondas for customer Renault engines, it had still fielded what at times was the slowest car on the grid. Its qualifying deficit in Abu Dhabi was just as great as the original disastrous Honda-engined car had been at this track in 2015.

The team’s trajectory was a concern. Zak Brown had rung the changes in ’18, as the scale of the car’s limitations was revealed. Technical director Tim Goss, racing director Eric Boullier and engineering director Matt Morris all lost their jobs, and Brown set about breaking down the silos which he found had developed around departments. Communication between them had broken down, competition between them had developed, a blame culture had emerged. Brown looked to the best communicator he had – Andrea Stella, who had joined the team from Ferrari in 2015 – and asked him to become team principal. Stella, feeling he lacked experience for that role, declined. He was instead made performance director. Brown concurrently recruited another great communicator, his friend Gil de Ferran, who took on the role of sporting director.