ONCE UPON A TIME IN VALENCIA

Is it a coincidence that when swapping the last two digits of 2021, the result points to a similarly scintillating – but even madder – Formula One season?

If you rolled your eyes at the reality-mangling film Rush (and you should have), for an ultimately unparallelled edge-of-seat plotline, Hollywood should have looked no further than the 2012 championship year.

2021 may have climaxed with a dead-heat finale, but 2012 featured no fewer than six world champions and, unprecedentedly, a different race winner at each of the season’s first seven races. And with the naturally aspirated, 19 000 r/min rev-limited, 2.4-litre V8 engines frozen from 2007 onwards, aerodynamics (especially around the diffuser) became the sole focus. Between