Put McLaren's Qatar Grand Prix fumble to one side for a moment: there were some seriously impressive performances across the weekend (and some not-so-memorable ones).
But who fared best overall at Lusail?
Here's Ben Anderson's best-to-worst ranking of all 20 Formula 1 drivers' performances, as he steps in for Edd Straw this week.
Agree or disagree? Leave questions or comments for him on this post in The Race Members' Club and he'll reply in his Q&A video later this week.
How do the rankings work? The 20 drivers will be ranked in order of performance from best to worst on each grand prix weekend. This will be based on the full range of criteria, ranging from pace and racecraft to consistency and whether they made key mistakes. How close each driver got to delivering on the maximum performance potential of the car will be an essential consideration.
It’s important to note both that this reflects performance across the entire weekend, cognisant of the fact that qualifying is effectively ‘lap 0’ of the race and key to laying the foundations to the race, and that it is not a ranking of the all-round qualities of each driver. It’s simply about how they performed on a given weekend. Therefore, the ranking will fluctuate significantly from weekend to weekend.
And with each of the 10 cars fundamentally having different performance potential and ‘luck’ (ie factors outside of a driver’s control) contributing to the way the weekend plays out, this ranking will also differ significantly from the overall results.
Started: 7th Finished: 3rd
That's two weekends in a row that Sainz has overachieved in the Williams, only this time it resulted in a podium, and he completely obliterated team-mate Alex Albon.
OK, McLaren imploded a bit (again) and Ferrari was nowhere (again), and Sainz also gained track position thanks to Mercedes being a bit tardy during the safety car-induced rush to the pits.
But the pace Sainz then showed to keep Lando Norris, Kimi Antonelli, George Russell et al at bay to the finish was truly impressive.
Verdict: Showing why Williams hired him - and why Ferrari shouldn't have fired him!
Started: 1st Finished: 2nd
Piastri bounced back to form after four really tough weekends in a row where he's looked completely out of sorts on bumpy and/or low-grip circuits, and it's a really marginal call between him and Sainz for the #1 spot.
Qatar is high-speed, high-commitment - the sort of place that really rewards Piastri's bravery - and the only reason he didn't complete a clean sweep of poles and wins across the sprint and the grand prix is because McLaren botched his strategy.
Sainz gets the nod for beating three cars he had no business beating and demolishing his team-mate more convincingly.
Verdict: The only thing missing was the final result.
Started: 3rd Finished: 1st
Verstappen is the other driver you could easily put at the top of this list and have little problem justifying it: he jumped Norris at the start and won the grand prix - convincingly so after the McLaren strategy team handed him the chance on a silver platter - and it was a victory against the run of play too.
Like Sainz, Verstappen converted the opportunity presented to him with some bludgeoning pace on the hard tyre, closing down Norris as McLaren told the championship leader he needed to extend the gap, and in the end Verstappen's winning margin over Piastri was comfortable too.
The only blot really, which can act as the three-way tiebreak if you like, is an underwhelming sprint qualifying performance in a bouncing car that allowed Yuki Tsunoda to beat him for the first time.
Verdict: Fully grasped his key opportunity, but not a perfect weekend.
Started: 6th Finished: 18th
Hadjar is just relentlessly impressive now and would have had a top-six finish in this race but for his front wing falling apart in the final laps and puncturing a tyre.
The main reason he's ranked outside the top three is the poor start he made that dropped him behind Sainz and Alonso. That meant he spent most of the race stuck at Alonso's pace until the Aston Martin spun.
You could also maybe argue his Q2 lap was a bit underwhelming, but even though he only just squeaked through to Q3 what he did once there was mightily impressive.
Verdict: Impressive performance but not perfect execution.
Started: 8th Finished: 7th
For most of this weekend, and certainly up to 40th of the 57 laps of this grand prix, Alonso was outstanding, hustling the Aston Martin into positions it surely didn't belong in.
A top-four grid spot for the sprint, ahead of both Red Bulls and a Mercedes, was beyond ridiculous. And even though the Aston Martin was clearly a race-pace roadblock, Alonso appeared to have the measure of Hadjar and Russell in the battle for sixth in the grand prix.
But spinning away two positions, and a slightly underwhelming performance in Q3 relative to Sainz and Hadjar, means this is as high as Alonso can go really.
Verdict: Would have ranked higher without his costly spin.
Started: 5th Finished: 5th
Antonelli could have contended for a top-three spot in these rankings but for a couple of things:
One: That mistake on the penultimate lap that let Norris through into fourth. Setting aside Helmut Marko engaging mouth before brain and triggering an extreme and needless social media pile-on, this was simply a case of a rookie driver appearing to creak a bit while being chased down by a faster car on a very fast circuit.
Two: Antonelli was fundamentally slower than Russell. The gap was a respectable 0.184s in grand prix qualifying, and Antonelli was one of only five drivers to go sub-1m20s all weekend, but he was behind nevertheless, and it seemed clear that over the course of the weekend - especially considering the comprehensive defeat he suffered in the sprint - that Antonelli wasn't the fastest nor most effective Mercedes driver.
Verdict: Another solid weekend spoiled by one key error.
Started: 4th Finished: 6th
Russell was in my provisional top four after qualifying on Saturday. Up until that point he'd barely put a wheel wrong: impressively splitting the McLarens in the sprint and coming within a whisker of outqualifying Verstappen's Red Bull for the grand prix.
What's dropped him down here is that poor first lap, during which he lost three crucial places to Sainz, Antonelli and Alonso - too many to simply put down to starting on the dirty side of the grid. Dropping behind Antonelli also meant Russell was the one compromised when Mercedes double-stacked the cars at the first round of pitstops, meaning another place lost to Hadjar.
Russell would have finished down in eighth but for Alonso's spin and Hadjar's puncture, so even though the final result was respectable there was a much better result left on the table here, probably a podium with perfect execution.
Verdict: Superb underlying performance seriously undermined by poor first lap.
Started: 2nd Finished: 4th
It's been a long time since we could say Norris was definitively the second best McLaren driver on a given weekend, but this was certainly the case in Qatar - although there wasn't much in it.
The gaps in qualifying were small but decisive, and there were mistakes along the way too - the result of what McLaren reckoned was Norris overreaching slightly while trying to drive in a way that doesn't come so naturally to him on this type of high-grip, high-speed circuit.
Norris's starts weren't great either, and he looked a bit lost for answers as Verstappen unleashed mid-race pace that Norris couldn't match. Without Antonelli's late wobble the final result would have been even worse too.
Verdict: Probably his worst weekend since Baku in September.
Started: 10th Finished: 8th
Every driver outside the top three in these rankings had some serious stains on their respective weekends - Leclerc included - but few had to deal with a car as unwieldy as the Ferrari.
Leclerc's driving was probably a bit messier than we're used to as a result, but also probably didn't change the outcome all that much. Could he have qualified a place or two higher without spinning away his best set of tyres in Q3? Probably.
Could that have translated into beating Alonso's Aston Martin in the grand prix? Possibly.
But how many others could haul a car running so obviously and horribly outside of its competitive window to the handful of points Leclerc managed? Not many I'd argue.
Verdict: Impressively resilient considering his lack of confidence in a woeful car.
Started: 13th Finished: DNF
He ended up with nothing to show for it, but I think Bearman overachieved all weekend in a car that wasn't well suited to the high-speed nature of the track and was tricky to balance too.
He was snapping at Leclerc's heels in the sprint and for most of the grand prix, until a problem attaching a rear wheel at Bearman's second pitstop completely ruined his race.
Without that he was on course to nab a couple of unlikely points.
Verdict: Clearly faster than Ocon all weekend and unlucky not to score.
Started: 11th Finished: DNF
I can hear the outcry already: "How can you put Hulkenberg so high up when he crashed out of the race so early?!"
Well, tell me what he did wrong. On a track everyone complained was impossible to overtake on, Hulkenberg passed Leclerc's Ferrari on lap two and was doing a pretty good job of passing Pierre Gasly's Alpine too before they came together, in what even the stewards - working to current (broken) racing guidelines - called a 'racing incident'.
I think Hulkenberg would easily have finished top eight in this race, and that he didn't wasn't wholly or predominantly down to him.
Verdict: The most impressive Sauber driver and unlucky to get wiped out.
Started: 9th Finished: 16th
Yep, yep, I can hear the same outcry about Hulkenberg's partner-in-Turn-1-crime getting ranked just behind him.
Regardless of what the stewards decided, I do think Gasly was marginally more culpable for their collision - and of course the resultant damage completely undid his own race.
You could use that as an argument to just dump him near the bottom of these rankings, but I like to give some extra weight to the underlying performance shown - especially when the key incident here wasn't a clear and obvious blunder by one driver.
Gasly's qualifying display was, for me, hands down the best of the lot - hauling the worst car on the grid into Q3 for the third race in a row. No one else left on this list did anything even remotely as impressive.
Verdict: Qualifying heroics rescue his ranking.
Started: 12th Finished: 9th
Now we're into the group of drivers who got convincingly overshadowed by their team-mates over the course of this weekend. Lawson is at the front of this group because no one else got closer to their team-mate at their point of elimination on Saturday than he did - just 0.083s separating him from Hadjar in Q2.
Lawson drove a tidy race after dropping behind Bearman's Haas on the first lap and banked a couple of points thanks to trouble ahead for Bearman, Hadjar, Gasly and Hulkenberg.
Verdict: The best of the convincingly defeated team-mates.
Started: 15th Finished: 10th
Tsunoda's weekend needed to finish after the sprint on Saturday morning, because at that point he looked like the driver Red Bull wanted him to be: quicker than Verstappen when Verstappen was struggling and able to support his team leader in the thick of battle.
But then the all-too-familiar unravelling: a Q1 exit followed by a frustrating race stuck behind cars he should have been well ahead of. At least jumping Albon's Williams on the first lap meant Tsunoda bagged a point, but even those green shoots he displayed on Friday look like too little too late to save him.
Verdict: Not his worst weekend by far but still not enough.
Started: 19th Finished: 13th
Bortoleto's grand prix was completely defined by the five-place grid penalty he picked up for skittling Lance Stroll at the first corner in Vegas. That was particularly unwise racing judgement considering the next race was always likely to be the worst of the season for overtaking!
Bortoleto was better than Hulkenberg in the sprint, but once again Hulkenberg forged ahead in grand prix qualifying, which has become a theme as Bortoleto's otherwise impressive rookie season has gone off the boil a bit recently.
He drove a perfectly respectable race and got ahead of Franco Colapinto's Alpine and Stroll's Aston Martin on merit, but was always on a hiding to nothing. Had he started where he qualified there's a good chance he'd have been in the mix for that final point.
Verdict: A grand prix defined by his deserved grid penalty.
Started: 14th Finished: 11th
This was another weekend, a bit like Vegas, where Williams had an unexpected opportunity to score a big result but Albon failed to put himself in the mix to achieve it.
There was no Q1 wall strike this time, but he made a mess of Q2 - lapping no faster than he managed in Q1 - and once he dropped behind Tsunoda's Red Bull, and the safety car negated his alternate strategy of starting on the hard tyre, Albon was completely reliant on attrition ahead to make progress.
There wasn't enough of that so he finished outside the points. On a weekend where his team-mate finished on the podium, that's a bad look.
Verdict: A second bad weekend on the bounce.
Started: 16th Finished: 15th
Ocon looks to be in a really tricky spot as Bearman's confidence grows and he becomes more established in F1. This was another weekend where Bearman totally had Ocon's measure, and Ocon was left grasping at familiar complaints about the brakes which are not really supported by what the team says.
Basically, it seems Bearman's driving style is coping much better with the instability in the car than Ocon's is, and the result here was Bearman putting himself in the fight to make Q3 and the lower reaches of the points, while Ocon toiled.
With everything else that happened, a completely clean race might have netted Ocon the final point, but his Antonelli-Vegas-style, micro-jump start and the resulting penalties rendered that impossible.
Verdict: Another poor weekend spent firmly in Bearman's shadow.
Started: 17th Finished: 12th
Often when the Ferrari has been a terrible car to drive in recent times it's actually helped Leclerc's team-mate get closer to him. That was usually the case when Sainz was driving for this team.
But if anything, the particular struggles Ferrari endured here - in terms of too-high tyre pressures cascading with a lack of downforce and an evil car balance - appeared to sap Hamilton's confidence even more than they did Leclerc's.
Hamilton followed a miserable Q1 exit in sprint qualifying with another miserable Q1 exit in grand prix qualifying, then had what he called a "dull" race after a decent first lap. It's fair to say he would have had a good shot at the final point but for being stacked behind Leclerc in the pits under the safety car, but being in that situation in the first place was a legacy of Hamilton's own underperformance.
Where Leclerc appeared to be butting against the upper limit of Ferrari's low performance ceiling in Qatar, Hamilton seemed to be well shy of it.
Verdict: Ferrari struggles aside, was too far off Leclerc's pace.
Started: 20th (pitlane) Finished: 14th
Another anonymous weekend from Colapinto in a season too full of them. Qualified a massive 0.452 seconds behind his team-mate amid another Q1 exit - and that was even after Gasly had his best lap deleted in that segment.
Colapinto was rightly "really unhappy" and "quite annoyed" with that performance.
His grand prix was no better, really, despite taking a pitlane start to overhaul the set-up of the car. He "really struggled for pace, for grip, sliding a lot, using the tyres too much" and finished less than two seconds clear of the heavily damaged car his team-mate was driving.
Verdict: Needs to find a way to raise his level over the winter.
Started: 18th Finished: 17th
I think Stroll is the obvious choice for the Qatar wooden spoon. No one qualified further off their team-mate than he did, and what's more Stroll had no obvious explanation either - except to say whatever higher limit Alonso could clearly feel in the car, Stroll admitted he simply couldn't access.
"For me it feels like a good lap, it's on the limit, but I'm on the limit of the grip I have," he said after qualifying 19th on Saturday. "And then I cannot find more pace with the feeling I have in the car."
With Alonso comfortably inside the top 10 in every segment of every session, it suggests Stroll had a fundamental problem at this level of speed and grip - which clearly wasn't the case when conditions were the opposite (slippery and wet) in Vegas qualifying.
The race was bad too, and made worse by Stroll simply failing to push his pitlane speed limit button in time, costing him what little chance he had left of a better result.
Verdict: Just a terrible performance from start to finish.
