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Plenty of strategy variation, some storming drives through the field and some poor days at the office made for an unpredictable and entertaining Brazilian Grand Prix.
Here are our winners and losers from an Interlagos classic.
Loser - Ferrari (DNF x2)
Ferrari came into the Interlagos weekend second in the constructors’ championship, but it leaves in fourth after an incident-filled grand prix.
Charles Leclerc was a helpless victim of Antonelli and Oscar Piastri’s clash, while Lewis Hamilton can take more blame for clipping the back of Franco Colapinto’s Alpine and ruining his Sunday.
Hamilton was at least able to serve his penalty in-race before retiring, so there isn’t any grid penalty pain carried over to Las Vegas. - Josh Suttill
Winner - Lando Norris (1st)
The biggest winner from the Brazilian GP weekend has to be Norris.
He came to Interlagos with a slender one-point advantage and turned that into a 24-point buffer, which means a good Las Vegas weekend can set up his first championship-clinching opportunity in Qatar.
The job is far from done. Norris himself acknowledged Verstappen could have won if he started higher up on the grid.
But Norris has gained important championship ground and, equally importantly, continued to be in the form of his life at exactly the right time as he continues to have team-mate Piastri’s number. - JS
Winner - Max Verstappen (3rd)
No one doubted Max Verstappen was capable of a ridiculous charge - he won from 17tth last year - but yesterday it looked like he was driving a boat rather than a Red Bull in qualifying.
Fast forward 24 hours and his car was instead alive with the sweet, sweet changes Red Bull made overnight and which forced the pitlane start.
Without his early puncture he may have had a chance at the win, without his final stop he may have had a chance to win, but this is merely academic and even being on the podium from a pitlane start is epic and feels beyond any other driver on the grid currently.
Even if Red Bull isn’t always the best, it’s hard to argue Verstappen isn’t. - Jack Benyon
Loser - Yuki Tsunoda (17th)
You just start to feel sorry for Tsunoda at this point. OK, he didn’t get the benefit of a new engine and totally revamped set-up from busting parc ferme like Verstappen did, but the contrast is still awful for Tsunoda - who finishes a twice penalised dead last while his team-mate storms to the podium from a pitlane start, despite picking up a puncture along the way.
But Tsunoda does have a crumb of comfort to cling to here, which is Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies pointing to a final stint in clean air that was on a par with an Oscar Piastri/Ollie Bearman level of pace. Without the original time penalty for contact with Stroll and then a second one for Red Bull touching Tsunoda's car too soon, Red Bull argues Tsunoda probably would’ve been fighting for a lower points finish.
That's still not close to Verstappen-level of course, but much more respectable than where Tsunoda ended up. - Ben Anderson
Winner: Racing Bulls (7th and 8th)
After three consecutive non-scoring weekends, Racing Bulls came back with a bang as both drivers got back on track and earned comfortable points finishes.
Liam Lawson must receive praise for being one of two drivers to make the one-stop strategy work - via a 52-lap stint on mediums.
That strategy wasn't even the pre-race plan but Lawson adapted perfectly and held his nerve as he led team-mate Isack Hadjar to the line for a strong points haul, despite being tracked down by drivers on fresher tyres at the end.
It could have ended in tears, however, as Hadjar made contact with Lawson on the final lap of the race. Hadjar conceded he “pushed it a little too much” at the end of the race, but said that the team “couldn’t do any better” than its seventh and eighth place finishes.
Racing Bulls anticipated that both cars had the speed to deliver a good result, and although it was a “very, very stressful” end to the race, as Lawson put it, they managed to do exactly that. - Eden Hannigan
Loser - Gabriel Bortoleto (DNF)
Rookie Gabriel Bortoleto’s first F1 home race has gone very far from plan. His monster penultimate lap sprint race shunt meant he missed qualifying and his grand prix lasted less than a lap after a clash with Lance Stroll.
It was unfortunate that Stroll wandered into Bortoleto’s path, but you can also argue that Bortoleto was taking an unnecessary risk by placing his car on the outside of Stroll when there was no hope of passing him there.
His back-on-form team-mate Nico Hulkenberg at least scooped two points for Sauber, but the team has lost ground to both Racing Bulls and Haas in that ultra-close midfield scrap. - JS
Winner - Ollie Bearman (6th)
Coming off delivering Haas’ best result since Austria 2018 in Mexico, Bearman walked into Brazil with a lot of pressure on his shoulders to keep a consistent form - a weakness he has been criticised for in his rookie season.
And, if you choose to ignore his incident in the sprint race with Liam Lawson - for which both drivers received penalties for - it’s fair to say that he has done so thanks to a solid eighth in qualifying and then a sixth in the race.
Sure, the incident with Lawson was messy, but his maturity to put it behind him and move forward shows his growth over the course of the season.
Asked after the race about his step forward, Bearman said: “It's been a series of really, really strong races and momentum is a powerful thing in this sport, so I'll try and keep it up.”
Putting his weekend in comparison with his experienced team-mate, Esteban Ocon (who was hampered by a slow puncture like Verstappen), the rookie has outshone him and capitalised on important points for the team in two weekends in a row. - Hamish Shackleton Bailey
Loser - Aston Martin (14th & 16th)
Considering how well Aston Martin performed in the sprint, with Fernando Alonso bagging three points for sixth place and Lance Stroll just missing out, the grand prix itself was a relative disaster.
Alonso took the risk to start on the hard tyre, thinking there was no point following the tyre strategy of the cars ahead to just finish behind them. But he found out the hard way why that tyre was so unfavoured. It was a strategy no one pulled off (unless you count Verstappen and his timely slow puncture!). Stroll suffered a similar fate but with the added complication of contact with Tsunoda’s Red Bull.
How to explain the team's stark pace drop-off between the sprint and the grand prix? Alonso was coy on this subject, but it’s most likely that Aston Martin had to raise the rear ride height to look after the legality plank - something that is less of a concern when you only have 24 laps to complete rather than 71… - BA
Winner - Kimi Antonelli (2nd)
I doubt anyone has been so happy to finish every qualifying and race session second as Kimi Antonelli in Brazil!
And all of them have come with adversity; the race was no different. I wonder what percentage he’d have given himself of being able to hold off a charging four-time champion when he was being slammed into the side of Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari early in the race?
He might be very lucky that the stewards apportioned blame on Piastri, which took him out of contention, but still, that could have been a race-ender for Kimi.
The most impressive part of all of this was, not the running up front or scoring his best grand prix finish, but doing it fighting tyre overheating and knowing what quick work Verstappen had made of his team-mate George Russell mere laps before.
An assured drive under pressure in easily his best race and weekend in F1 so far - also clearly ahead of Russell for the duration.
And important for Mercedes, which capitalised on a terrible Ferrari weekend to reclaim a hold on second in the constructors’ championship. - JB
Loser - Williams (11th and 13th)
A point-less weekend for Williams while several of its competitors in the constructors' championship, most notably Racing Bulls, were able to capitalise on its woes.
Team principal James Vowles said Carlos Sainz’s race was “over from Turn 1” after the driver had contact with Lewis Hamilton on the first lap, which damaged his front wing and car’s underbody, which meant a significant loss in downforce. He finished 13th.
Meanwhile, with Alex Albon, Vowles held his hands up and admitted that although there were points on the table for the team, they “didn’t get it all right today”, with Albon setting the fastest lap but missing out on points by one position.
On a day where the midfield was so tight, it seemed Williams was the team that lost out the most, thanks to strategy.
Looking ahead to the next three races, Albon did not seem confident Williams would be able to score big points and said the team “need to regroup and come back strongly”. - HSB
Loser: Oscar Piastri (5th)
It just proved to be a weekend that never really got going for Oscar Piastri, which was compounded by a small mistake with big consequences in Sunday’s grand prix.
Although Piastri and McLaren disagreed with the 10-second penalty for his role in the collision between Kimi Antonelli and Charles Leclerc, he ultimately put himself in a compromised position that was unrecoverable by the time the chequered flag was flown.
Given the circumstances of his Brazilian GP weekend and for the whack he gave Antonelli, fifth was by no means a bad place to end it, but when compared to team-mate Norris’ near-perfect sweep, it was another race which saw his title hopes wither away. - EH
