It is not often we congratulate one of our Grand Prix Drivers Club members on the birth of a child but when the news came last week of the birth of a son to Bernie Ecclestone and his wife Fabiana it was clearly something special.
Following his divorce some years ago few would have expected Bernie not only to re-marry but to start a family at a time when people of similar age would be looking up addresses of nursing homes.
But, Bernie, as he has done throughout his entire career in motor racing, surprised us all with the arrival of his son Ace.
The Grand Prix Drivers Club raises a glass to him and Fabiana and looks forward to the day, perhaps eight years from now, when the name Ace Ecclestone appears on the programme for a junior kart race and so beginning the second generation of racing Ecclestones.