Over the Mexican Grand Prix weekend, word reached Autosport via a senior Ferrari team insider that Rory Byrne is back at Maranello on a full-time basis and hard at work on the 2017 car.

It's fair to say that we became quite excited by this tidbit of knowledge. And then we thought, "Hang on a second - haven't we been here before?"

Byrne was one of the principal architects of Ferrari's unprecedented run of success between 1999 and 2007, a skilled and creative designer brought in by team principal Jean Todt, star driver Michael Schumacher and technical director Ross Brawn in 1996.