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Then there's the cash, about $30million. Now Richards is creative when it comes to raising money to go racing; the DBR9s, for example, were pre-sold to collectors to pay for the programme. There's a futures market in DBRs with racing provenance, with the last contract sold for over $1million.

A decision needs to be made by September and, even with allowances for Richards's singular brand
of cool, he seems agnostic. He recognises that Aston's relationship with Le Mans is less intense than Jaguar - it did, after all, kind of luck in to the 1959 win.

"No," he says, "we have to be in the proposed 2010 GT world championships, racing against Porsche 
and Ferrari and Lamborghini and the Audi R8. Although I don't see why I should loan Aston's credibility and provenance to Nissan and Toyota. Jaguar, however, have to be at Le Mans."

Jaguar. OK, rules for-off-the-record conversations - especially 5.00am ones - with Chairmen, CEOs, MDs or anyone who gets to sign off a bill that runs well into seven figures are rather like privy counsel conversations; they never actually happened.
But I can tell you this with absolute certainty - Jaguar wants to do an LMP programme and go for an eighth win (to match Audi) in 2010.

Ask Jaguar MD Mike O'Driscoll to confirm, and he'll
 confirm the will, if not exactly the intent. You can understand why he needs to be cagey; it's not just
the new management he doesn't want to surprise, but a not inconsiderable constituency of fans.

But considering that Jaguar moved back in to profit the month after the Indians took over, his thinking doesn't sound unreasonable. So 12/13
June 2010. Can we call it a date?