After 18 years, it was always going to be a wrench leaving. “Oh, I really agonised over it,” Rod Ellingworth says of his decision, taken in April, to quit Team Sky and accept an offer from McLaren to run their new joint venture with Bahrain-Merida.

“I debated long and hard with friends. I even went to see [the psychiatrist] Steve Peters at one point. But in the end, you know, it just felt like the right time… Sky were going in a completely different direction with Ineos coming in. I’d been working with Dave [Brailsford] for 18 years, which is incredible really. And you get comfortable don’t you? Fran [Millar, chief executive], Tim [Kerrison] Carsten [Jeppesen, head of technical operations], that whole gang...”

Ultimately, Ellingworth says, it was nothing to do with Sky or Ineos or any of the people there, who he describes as “like family”. “I wasn’t p----d off. It was fine. It was just starting to feel a little bit Groundhog Day. I wasn’t as motivated by the new challenge as I should have been. I needed something new.”

It has been six months since that decision. Ellingworth, who was initially placed on gardening leave by Sky, has not said anything in public since. But he is back now.