We’ve never got the impression before that David Coulthard and Michael Schumacher were necessarily the best of mates.
It was probably something to do with all those hand gestures and the reports of narrowly-averted punch-ups in the pit lane.
But there was probably nothing worse than a healthy competitive instinct at work, according to DC, who has been asked by Autosport.com whether Formula One is worse off now his old adversary has retired.
Asked whether Formula One missed Schumacher, his reply was extremely reasonable.
He said: “I think life moves on. There will be people who do miss certain aspects of Michael. He was such a large part of my career and trying to beat him was obviously very difficult.
“To reminisce of my best championship year, I finished second, and I finished second to him. So if he had just never been born then maybe it could have been different!
But that is life. With Michael, you knew that he was one of the best, if not the best there has ever been, and if you were able to beat him then that was a big sense of achievement.”
In other words, it completely failed to live up to the ‘handbags at dawn’ spin that most headline writers tried to put on it.
Of course, if the two veteran drivers find themselves on the track together once more, we could be straight back to the days of storming into each other’s garages to have a word…