Ollie Bearman not only revelled in the "really cool" experience of going toe-to-toe with some of Formula 1's top guns in the Mexican Grand Prix, but also thrived.
Inevitably, that's led to a rush to anoint him as a nailed-on future Ferrari driver, but he still has some way to go before he's assured of so bright a future.
That's by no means a dismissal of his prospects, simply a reflection of the fact that Ferrari is a big player in the driver market and sets the highest standards in terms of its line-up.
While Red Bull usually runs a 'next cab off the rank' strategy, Ferrari's academy is never assured of graduates to an F1 race seat and therefore needs a candidate to be potential world champion material. The bar Bearman is being measured against is not of being Antonio Giovinazzi, but Charles Leclerc.
To date, Bearman's rookie campaign has been good but not as impressive as Leclerc's. That’s no great criticism because Leclerc, after a shaky initial three races, excelled for Sauber in 2018. Bearman's peaks have been comparable, and Mexico is far from a solitary high point, but where he has struggled is with consistent execution.
That's to be expected for a rookie, but even by that standard this season has been a little too patchy. At one stage, he went 10 grands prix without scoring a point (although he did bag two for seventh in the Spa sprint during that spell), and his points total of 32 is lower than his pace has promised.
The British GP weekend, where he led the midfield in qualifying but earned a 10-place grid penalty for shunting in the pit entry road under the red flag, is totemic of how badly wrong things have gone at their worst.
The main challenge for rookies is to learn how to join the dots of peak performance and as he's in his first full season Bearman has plenty of time to go through this process. After all, the earliest there can be a vacancy at Maranello is 2027 and even that's dependent on Lewis Hamilton walking away or Leclerc forcing an exit to another team.
The speed is there and he also demonstrated his mental strength with an outstanding stand-in performance on his F1 debut for Ferrari in last year's Saudi Arabian GP. His seventh place, with no Friday practice in the car, was remarkable but the very fact Ferrari was prepared to throw him in at a track where it would be easy to smash a hole both in the car and the cost-cap plans reflects how highly it values him. Therefore, several boxes were already ticked before this year.
Stringing things together consistently to prove you are ready to deliver week in, week out in a top team is a different challenge. To achieve that, you must demonstrate technical understanding, a good work ethic, the ability to progress throughout an event, and produce that pace on track without overstepping the mark.
Bearman has failed on that final count on too many occasions this season, not only with high-profile mistakes such as Silverstone, but also getting caught up in incidents that weren't entirely his fault (the collisions with Yuki Tsunoda at Austin and Carlos Sainz at Monza) but that he could have avoided and also just making smaller errors when reaching for 101%.
Among the low points are Australia, where he crashed in FP1 and FP3, copping a harsh-but-fair 10-place grid penalty for passing just after the red flag was deployed at Monaco, that Silverstone crash, multiple floor-damaging wide moments in Hungary, the aforementioned collisions that he didn't get the blame for but that experience might have allowed him to avoid, the track limits penalty while battling Antonelli in the US sprint race and crashing while rapid in Q2 in Azerbaijan.
On top of that, there's events like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Miami, Canada and Austria which were decent enough but where he was unable to produce the pace required at every key moment, or Spain where he picked up a penalty for gaining an advantage by leaving the track.
There have also been some impressive outings. Bearman was unfortunate with timing in qualifying in China before driving an impressive race to come through to eighth; he had a strong Japan where he qualified and raced well; and a spectacularly unlucky Imola where he was quick but the timing of the red flag in qualifying and the need to make a double pitstop thanks to a poorly attached wheel left him with terrible results on paper.
He would likely have scored in Belgium but for a power unit problem that cost power, scored in Singapore, and then his 'halo weekend' in Mexico.
What's most encouraging is the positive trend. In the six events since the August break he's scored points in four of them and had the speed to do so in the other two. Before the break, I'd ranked him third-best rookie behind Isack Hadjar and Gabriel Bortoleto but he's forcing himself into contention for top spot. The shape of the season matters when evaluating rookies, so the final four events will be important in judging that.
He's also shown that there's a huge amount of driving ability. Bearman is more often than not quicker than experienced team-mate Esteban Ocon and has a higher tolerance for high-speed instability. He is also happy attacking the braking/turn-in to slower corners in a way that doesn't encourage understeer, which has not always been Ocon's strength. That's indicative of a driver happy hustling the car with good confidence, and one who is well-suited to the demands of this tricky current generation of ground-effect car.
And there's nothing to say that he won't thrive in next year's cars, simply that they will be a different challenge and one that will test his capacity to adapt and take on board their driving style demands. That's another opportunity to impress.
To be assured of a Ferrari future Bearman must show he can be great, or rather get to a point where he has partially realised the potential to be so with further gains to come once he is promoted. He's making progress and the trajectory is positive. In Haas, he is with the ideal team to show his continued improvement as 2025 turns into 2026.
That's what's so tantalising for Bearman. While he hasn't yet done enough to guarantee himself a Ferrari F1 future, he has built a firm foundation and converted some of the promise that it saw in him into tangible performance at the very top level.
He's not ready yet, but is starting to build a case for promotion whenever Ferrari has a vacancy.
Over the next year or two with Haas, Bearman has the opportunity not just to ensure his name is on the shortlist, but at the top of it when the time comes. And top of the agenda if he is to do so is to continue to build on his consistency because if there's one thing that's beyond question, he's plenty fast enough.
