Well, as I said in my goodbye piece, "He says he has unfinished business in F1 - and I have learned to believe him completely."

True to form we now learn from Autosport.com "Red Bull boss Dietrich Mateschitz has confirmed the talks, and admitted that although not chosen for a race seat there was still interest in using the Japanese. "He has a good reputation in Japan," said Mateschitz. "He could work with us very well"."

Of course, his access to a race seat will depend on someone else being unavailable in either Red Bull or Torro Rosso.

No-one here wishes any driver ill, but we are at least bolstered by the fact that crashes and other sports can take drivers out. Webber is of course recovering ahead of schedule, but who knows?

If this comes to be it will be a bitter-sweet appointment. Taku would be at all the GP's just in case, but mostly watching others race. Anthony Davidson will tell you what a torture that can be - he once stood in for Taku at Malaysia and then had engine failure on the first lap (that was a bad weekend to be sat anywhere near me in Sepang).

The massive advantage though, is that Taku will be on hand and familiar with the car and the teams as soon as one of the other drivers messes up or gets hurt. It also keeps him in the pitlane and on people's mind. A year as an under-used third driver is heaps better than a year in the wilderness.

More hope, more waiting, more torture for us fans!

My support of Takuma is far from over, whatever he decides to do next, I will be there trying to watch and get great enjoyment from his racing. I hope it is F1 - with a couple of seats coming along in the not too distant future, who knows?  He says he has unfinished business in F1 - and I have learned to believe him completely.

However, for the moment I think this website will be going even quieter than it is now. Even a few posts per week will probably drop off now that F1 holds little joy for us. 

So I just wanted to say a big Thank You to the regulars, to Matthew and Emma for their great input over the years - much of my insight was thanks to the very special relationships that we were able to make with Taku and the team.

Thanks to Anton for hosting and paying for this site, and Sach for her work in translating.

And a big thank you to all our passing visitors. Over the years, hundreds of thousands of fans have stopped by and read a little. I enjoyed writing for you all.

I have had a very special time the past four years with amazing access to F1 and stunning times meeting Taku, Matthew, Emma, Andrew, and hundreds of amazing fans. Thank you all for your friendship and your hospitality - Taku has the very best fans in the world.

Hope to meet you all again soon.

Mark. ( This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it )