Twenty-five years of failure appear finally to have come to an end with the protracted death throes of Arrows this year.

Arrows were always going to have a difficult time – there were rumours from the very beginning of the season that there was not enough money to take them to the end of the year, and so it proved.

The car produced by technical director Mike Coughlan – now at McLaren - and his team was quite good, and included some interesting ideas. But they never got the chance to discover its potential.

From July onwards, it was downhill rapidly, in a manner that was embarrassing for F1.

The team were declared insolvent by a High Court judge in July, and clearly could not afford to pay their engine bills or many of their other creditors.

And yet they were allowed to stumble on, first going to races but not trying, and then not even bothering to try to keep up the pretence.

Unless there is a miracle over the winter, F1 has seen the last of Arrows – the team with the ignoble record of going the longest in history without a win.