Formula 1 drivers had a whole lot more to get their heads around than usual at the Miami Grand Prix, what with the wholesale package changes most teams introduced and the small matter of changes to the rules.
Who adapted to those challenges best? Find out in Edd Straw's driver rankings - and if you're in The Race Members' Club you can quiz Edd on his choices and (for Champions tier members) submit your own rankings too.
How do the rankings work? The 22 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 for 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 11 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: 8th Finished: 7th
This is the weekend Franco Colapinto needed, and comfortably the strongest all-round of his F1 career to date.
While the scheduled introduction of a new monocoque helped, and it should be noted he didn't have the Alpine rear wing upgrade, it would do a disservice to the work he did since Japan to get himself more in-tune with the car to credit that solely for the improvement in qualifying speed in particular.
The result was he outpaced team-mate Pierre Gasly throughout the weekend, finishing two places behind him in 10th in the sprint primarily thanks to the misfortune of being on the outside of Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton in Turn 2, which allowed his team-mate to get ahead.
His grand prix was outstanding, but the deciding factors in him being ranked second are the small negative of the contact with Hamilton, when the rear end stepped out as he relied on luck not to suffer a puncture, and the bad start. This puts him marginally behind in the two-driver top tier in these rankings.
Verdict: Connected up the peaks of pace throughout the weekend.
Started: 21st Finished: 12th
This was one of those weekends where you wouldn't necessarily notice how well Gabriel Bortoleto performed unless you looked closely given the pace of the Audi was only good enough to be just outside the top 10 and he was given limited opportunities to show his speed.
He couldn’t have done better in sprint qualifying, putting the car 11th on the grid just ahead of his team-mate Nico Hulkenberg, then holding that position in the race before being excluded when the car was discovered to have briefly exceeded the maximum permitted intake air pressure.
Problems ruined qualifying proper, as he was only sent out late and in no condition to set a good time in the hastily-repaired car, and from a lowly grid position he executed his long-first-stint strategy well to recover to 12th place. The main downside is he didn't have the chance to show just how strong he could have been consistently.
Verdict: Qualifying problem cost him likely points shot.
Started: 17th Finished: 15th
Fernando Alonso was at least happy with the fact the Aston Martin-Honda steering vibration problems have been cured, but beyond that there was little for him to get excited about.
However, he did beat the Cadillacs most of the time, the only exception being in sprint qualifying when he didn't get in a proper lap as he battled lock-up problems. There were also difficulties in main qualifying with the gearbox.
He raced as well as he could have done, passing Lance Stroll and Sergio Perez late on in the sprint to take 16th, then finishing as well as he could have done in the grand prix on a compromised strategy dictated by running longer than anyone before making his pitstop on lap 41 in the hope of rain.
Verdict: Performed well, but limited opportunities given the machinery.
Started: 20th Finished: 16th
Despite problems in FP1 and there only being time for one attempt in sprint qualifying thanks to there not being enough time to refuel during SQ1, Perez outpaced the struggling Cadillac team-mate Valtteri Bottas. That turned around in second qualifying, with Perez failing to hit a button he should have done on his second run and then locking up entering Turn 14 on the final run when he arrived significantly faster than anticipated thanks to erratic deployment.
In both races, he was feisty and mixed it with faster cars early on but delivered good race drives that on both occasions allowed him to finish ahead of Stroll.
Verdict: Led the line for Cadillac.
Started: 18th Finished: 17th
Like his team-mate Alonso, Stroll suffered from the limited opportunities to show what he could do in an Aston Martin that proved tricky under braking. That contributed to his failure to set a laptime in sprint qualifying, although while battling similar gearbox problems to Alonso in qualifying proper he lapped just 0.072s slower than his team-mate.
He ran ahead of Alonso for much of the sprint before falling behind, while he made a good start in the grand prix before slipping back. He diverged from the orthodox one-stop strategy but that didn't help his cause, although he finished only eight seconds behind Alonso.
Verdict: Lacked Alonso's edge but wasn't far off.
Started: 9th Finished: DNF
Gasly was puzzled by his struggles for traction throughout the weekend, saying the Alpine felt very different to how it did previously. Most likely, that was down to the grip characteristics of the track surface and high temperatures rather than anything fundamental, and he didn't attempt to attribute it to the rear wing upgrade only he was running, saying after qualifying "I don't think it's down to the parts we have on the car".
The result was he was outpaced by Colapinto, who was 0.154s and 0.54s quicker in the respective qualifying sessions, although Gasly did seize on his team-mate's compromised wide line through Turn 2 at the start of the sprint to jump ahead and ultimately bag a point.
He was hindered by Verstappen's spin at the start of the main race, dropping to 12th, and the early exit after being tipped into a roll by Lawson was not of his making. His sprint performance showed that a decent result would otherwise have been on the cards.
Verdict: Second-best Alpine driver.
Started: 5th Finished: 5th
Russell heads the fourth tier, best labelled 'underwhelming for the machinery'.
Four tenths off Mercedes team-mate Antonelli in both qualifying sessions, the only real sign of life he showed in the battle with his team-mate was in the sprint race where he looked to have the speed to maybe have beaten him on track but even so had to benefit from a penalty to move up to fifth.
In the grand prix, he summed it up accurately as "the pace was really, really poor on my side" and even admitted he was experimenting with driving styles in the closing stages in an attempt to unlock more pace at a track where he's often struggled. That's largely down to the relatively low grip levels and high temperatures, which he can have difficulty in adapting to in a similar vein to Piastri.
The best thing that can be said about his weekend is that it was at least effective damage limitation, although he did have to survive picking up front wing damage after late contact with Verstappen.
Verdict: Simply not at Antonelli's level.
Started: 14th Finished: 13th
Ocon was all at sea on Friday, struggling with lock-ups and a lack of grip on what he characterised as the most difficult day of the year so far. However, he turned SQ1 elimination into a decent race, getting ahead of Haas team-mate Bearman to finish 11th.
While he never showed anything like Bearman’s Q1 pace in qualifying proper, he was on target to beat his team-mate before clipping the wall at the exit of Turn 16, knocking the steering out and costing himself time at the final proper corner and leaving himself two tenths behind.
Although he felt his pace faded in the second stint of the grand prix, he had a similar race to Bearman overall pace-wise but with time lost to running longer. He was then passed by Bortoleto during the second stint.
Verdict: Struggled but only marginally less effective than Bearman.
Started: 16th Finished: 14th
Lindblad was on the back foot from the start after lock-ups caused damage to both sets of tyres in FP1, although he performed well in sprint qualifying. However, he wasn't able to start the sprint, meaning he went into the main event with a data and experience deficit.
He fell in Q1 after traffic compromised the preparation for his qualifying lap, leaving him an unrepresentative six tenths off Racing Bulls team-mate Lawson.
In the grand prix, he ran 15th initially and endured a difficult first stint on the mediums, but was happier with his pace on the hards. That added up to 14th place as although he gained positions to Gasly and Lawson retiring, he was overcut by Bortoleto.
Verdict: More valuable experience banked.
Started: 3rd Finished: 6th
Leclerc is the first in a small group of drivers who had outstanding weekends but with their rankings tanked by one major mistake.
He led the line for Ferrari, outpacing Hamilton by 0.379s and 0.200s in the two qualifying sessions and turned fourth on the grid into third in the sprint. His performance in the grand prix was so close to being outstanding, leading early on in a Ferrari that didn't really have the pace to be there and then battling competitive gravity for the rest of the race.
Sadly, he fought it a little too hard when trying to retaliate against Piastri after losing third place, spinning and clipping the barrier. Although he crossed the line sixth after being passed by Russell and Verstappen, his forced track cuts in a damaged car earned him a 20-second penalty that dropped him to eighth. That penalty was forgivable, but the spin was a major error.
Verdict: The last lap means a big rating drop.
Started: 22nd (pits) Finished: DNF
The final tier is a class of one.
After a good start in the first three events, Isack Hadjar had a nightmare weekend in Miami and couldn't find the pace from the improved Red Bull that Verstappen did.
In sprint qualifying, Hadjar attributed half of the near-one-second deficit to deployment problems and half to his driving, compounding that with a poor start on his way to a pointless ninth in the sprint after passing Colapinto late on. He was a little happier in qualifying proper, but still not at Verstappen’s level on his way to Q3.
His disqualification for the floorboards on both sides exceeding the permitted reference volume left him starting from the pits, but his race was short-lived and just after passing Lindblad he clipped the Turn 14 wall, with the resulting front-left damage sending him, furiously, into the wall.
Unfortunately, the combination of lack of pace and the big mistake in the race puts him alone in the bottom tier.
Verdict: For the first time, nowhere near Verstappen's level.