Formula 1's 2025 Mexican Grand Prix delivered plenty of action and plenty of options for Sunday's edition of winners and losers.
Here are our picks...
Winner: Ollie Bearman (4th)
Bearman struggled to hide his excitement about what was to come on Sunday after making Q3 for a third-successive grand prix. Because while he had question marks over Haas's qualifying pace he felt "we had really good race pace" in Friday's long run simulations.
Boy did that prove to be prescient.
But this result needed the execution as well as the opportunity - something that Haas and Bearman have fallen down on this season. Here, though, they converted: Bearman was opportunistic in the Lewis Hamilton/Max Verstappen/George Russell kerfuffle and then drove an excellent race to keep faster cars at bay.
It was only right, then, that his best drive in F1 was rewarded with his best result, one that matched Haas's best too.
And a quick nod to Esteban Ocon, too, for a dependable drive to ninth. Those two extra points moved Haas up to eighth in the constructors' championship, ahead of Sauber in what is an ultra-tight fight for sixth.
Talk about a transformative result. - Jack Cozens
Loser: Yuki Tsunoda (11th)
There were flashes of promise from Tsunoda in the Mexican GP: for one, he did keep Oscar Piastri at bay for a spell in the opening stint and, once those who started on the softs had pitted, there was a period when his pace compared well to Verstappen's.
But the pace looked pretty poor in the intervening laps as he struggled to shake off Ocon.
Even so, Tsunoda would probably have grabbed some points but for a slow pitstop that dropped him behind Isack Hadjar (who stopped two laps earlier) and allowed Gabriel Bortoleto (who stopped a lap later) to emerge ahead.
Still, his claim that he was on for "P6, P7" doesn't really stand up - ninth, maybe eighth if he'd been able to snipe at an ailing Hamilton, was probably the limit.
And even with that delay in the pits, was it really too much to expect a Red Bull to find its way past a Racing Bulls, a Sauber and a Haas in the closing stages? - JC
Winner: Lando Norris (1st)
F1's new championship leader can be delighted with how the entire Mexico weekend played out.
It's the most effortless a Norris weekend has ever looked from start to finish, and it couldn't be timed better.
It hasn't come out of nowhere, either, as Norris has been properly impressive when compared to Piastri since his Zandvoort DNF. And now he's been able to deliver that hammerblow that he really should have dropped in Baku.
Norris rightly points out it's only one weekend but, given McLaren had the pace in the dry to dominate Brazil last year, he can dream of doing exactly that again if the skies allow him to. - Josh Suttill
Loser: Oscar Piastri (5th)
There's only really one reason why Piastri's in the loser's column post-race and that's for the implication of this result in the context of the drivers' championship.
There was nothing wrong with the drive itself: Piastri blended caution when needed with some combative moves, most notably on Russell, and fifth represented a decent recovery from both the depths of his qualifying deficit and the opening lap.
But he's been too good this season for his points lead to have been frittered away and lost in the way it has been. And the US-Mexico trend is one he desperately needs to reverse quickly. - JC
Loser: George Russell (6th)
At no point did Russell's feisty radio messages seem to cross the line: it's clear that he grasped the gravity of the situation while sat in behind Kimi Antonelli and knew that inaction was unlikely to get either of them anywhere.
It's just a shame that it came back to bite him in a really underwhelming way by being asked to move back aside for Antonelli after first failing to make an impression on Bearman and then getting divebombed by Piastri.
Not a lot he could do there, and maybe the Mercedes just wasn't up to the podium challenge that Russell thought was there for the taking.
But you can bet while Russell was in the heat of those radio exchanges that he'd never have expected to cross the line seventh. - JC
Winner: Max Verstappen (3rd)
The Austin win was significant for legitimising Verstappen's title bid, but this podium on a weekend where Verstappen looked like he could end up finishing outside the top five might be even more important.
Verstappen's soft-tyre stint was simply sublime as he gapped the cars behind and came within touching distance of finishing second.
If championships are won on bad days, then this is a very good sign for Verstappen, who got away with a dodgy Turn 1, a failed lunge on Hamilton, and being gazumped by Bearman's Haas shortly afterwards.
There's a different reality where the stewards penalise Verstappen, or Red Bull follows the crowd and commits him to a two-stopper, which means he finishes in the middle of the top 10.
But in this world we're living in, Verstappen's kept himself in the title fight and has got closer to the lead than Norris ever did to his late last year. - JS
Loser: Carlos Sainz (DNF)
Not just a race to forget for Sainz, but one that's worth investing in technology that would make a Men In Black-style memory wipe of the last 12 hours realistic.
It went wrong at the start with an unwanted follow-up to his Zandvoort clash with Lawson.
And then things went from bad to worse with vibrations from that crash that caused pitlane limiter damage that meant back-to-back pitlane speeding penalties - the latter of which was a drivethrough penalty that wrecked any slim hope of points.
Sainz ended up retiring from what will feel like the second consecutive wasted opportunity of the weekend, given he'd qualified seventh pre-grid penalty. - JS
Winner: Charles Leclerc (2nd)
OK, not the pace that was perhaps expected of Ferrari and the rate of the drop-off versus Verstappen was alarming at times.
But Leclerc made hay in the early stages (even if he was perhaps fortunate to be allowed to keep second rather than dropping behind Hamilton) and ensured that one Ferrari remained at the sharp end; though Hamilton's penalty contributed to his limp finish, it's easy to imagine in other circumstances that both cars might've gone backwards.
Two podiums on the trot will be welcome after such a long spell without one, too, and that result moves Ferrari back ahead of Mercedes (by a point) in the battle to finish runner-up to McLaren this year. - JC
Loser: Lewis Hamilton (8th)
One could argue Hamilton was unlucky in Mexico, given he got the jump on his Ferrari team-mate Leclerc into Turn 1, only to lose that place when Leclerc skipped across the grass.
He was then on the receiving end of a rather ambitious Verstappen lunge that somewhat barged Hamilton out of the way.
But Hamilton and Ferrari have to take some responsibility for the way he cut the track at Turn 4 and then didn't give the position - or at the very least the time gained - back.
That was always going to end with a race-wrecking penalty, and that's exactly what happened as the 10-second delay he was given for his pitstop ruined a decent chance at a first Hamilton grand prix podium of 2025. - JS
Loser: Alpine (15th and 16th)
There are plenty of strong contenders, but this has to be the worst weekend of Alpine's torrid 2025 season, given just how far off the pack Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto were.
It was "a long and lonely afternoon for us" in the words of Colapinto, who was at least allowed to race Gasly in the closing stages this week and avoid any team orders 'disappointment'. - JS
Winner: Gabriel Bortoleto (10th)
The Sauber looked like firm Q1/Q2 fodder at Mexico so while Bortoleto's early exit in 16th place on Saturday didn't carry the same level of alarm as his US GP slump, equally there was nothing to suggest he'd be points-bound on Sunday.
But this was a well-judged race from him and Sauber. There wasn't much in it but the medium-to-soft strategy appeared marginally the faster option in the midfield and Bortoleto used that to good effect, slotting into 11th and the gap created by Tsunoda's slow pitstop then finding a way past Hadjar with a mega move around the outside at Turn 1 to nab the final point.
Sure, Sauber lost a position in the constructors' championship - but it was a statement for Bortoleto to salvage something for his team in the wake of Haas's big haul. - JC
Loser: Racing Bulls (13th and DNF)
Racing Bulls has failed to score a point for the third race weekend running - its longest dry spell for over a year and the worst-possible time given how compressed the midfield is.
A big whack from Sainz ruined Lawson's race before it really started, while Hadjar made a mistake at Turn 6 on the first lap, which "compromised quite a lot of our race".
He ran in the points until late on but was powerless to stop a descent to 13th, believing "we just didn't have enough pace to fight for points".
Racing Bulls is clinging onto sixth place, but it has three teams behind it, separated by just 12 points, ready to capitalise should its rot continue. - JS
