Does a dominant United States Grand Prix victory make Max Verstappen the new 2025 Formula 1 title favourite?
He's now 40 points adrift of leader Oscar Piastri, with Lando Norris now 14 points behind Piastri after clinching second late on at Austin.
Here's what our team thinks.
The point at which a driver becomes a proper title threat is subjective and I always felt last year Norris never crossed that threshold, despite what others wanted to force us to think.
Verstappen's done it though. He had been working his way into the picture slowly but still had a lot to do. This weekend leaves me with no doubt at all.
I've been saying for a while Verstappen's been the best driver of 2025 and I remember as early as Japan thinking that, if he could just stay in contention and get more help from Red Bull with car improvements, he would do the job.
But I never thought he would fall as far adrift as he did, and could not have assumed Red Bull would rebound this effectively after the summer.
It has been a strange season, but one in which Verstappen's hit top form - with a consistently great car again - in time to not only be in the title fight but almost in control of his own destiny.
It will be hard. The points situation does not allow him to be the favourite. But unless Red Bull suddenly swings to being second-best again, he's my pick from here.
Favourite, no? Firmly in the hunt? Absolutely.
Ever since McLaren boss Andrea Stella left us all wondering if there was a bit of mind games at play when he suggested back in Baku that Verstappen was a proper title threat, the Red Bull driver's charge has come alive.
But despite having smashed into Piastri's title lead, a 40-point deficit is still something that is going to need the wind to blow his way if that is going to turn into a shock championship grab.
The mathematics are still in Piastri's favour, but McLaren needs to regroup if it is not going to turn opportunity into the big prize for Verstappen.
It needs answers on why its car has lost the advantages it had earlier in the year. And it has to get a grip on not letting the personal battle between its two drivers, and the obsession over fairness, become a distraction.
It is far from a given that Verstappen's stunning form continues like this, but you cannot rule it out.
Sleepless nights lie ahead for those at McLaren, but the fight is not lost yet.
I don't think Verstappen could have done more at Austin - two poles and two wins, so maximum points from this event - but I still wouldn't say he is the favourite.
I will say he will be fighting to the bitter end, though, and when Max is in a fighting mood, just about anything could happen, and he now has the car to fight with.
Norris nipping past Charles Leclerc in the later laps was a big bonus for him. As for Piastri, I think all we can say here is he made the best of a very bad weekend. That said, he is still leading the championship, albeit with Norris and Verstappen both getting bigger in his rear-view mirror.
Piastri needs to regroup and get his confidence back. He needs to arrive in Mexico next weekend and be on it from the first session with no mistakes and bank as many points as possible, or at least not throw any more away.
His main problem is that in this latter part of the season, there are more competitive cars around than there were at the beginning of the year, so scoring big points might not be as easy as it was then; others can nab them very quickly, but I suppose it's the same for Verstappen and Norris.
Quite frankly, McLaren and its drivers will be bricking it right now, with Verstappen only 40 points behind in a car that looks a match for the McLaren.
No other driver on the grid would have forced their way back into a private, intra-team title fight like Verstappen has.
And in part, it's been made possible by Piastri and Norris leaving too many points on the table this year, with a car that was good enough to have this title already clear of Verstappen's reach.
Earlier this year, McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown claimed "100%" he'd stick with his driver line-up even if Verstappen was available to snap up on a multi-year deal.
That's an understandable position to take - it would be lunacy to declare publicly you want to sign another driver when you have two locked down on multi-year deals. And both Piastri and Norris have plenty of merit and could win a title in the right circumstances.
But I can't help but wonder, should Verstappen continue to sneak up and steal this title - and I think he will even before Abu Dhabi, making him an unusual title favourite - then will Brown and McLaren start to doubt whether they're lacking an elite, world-class driver to spearhead a project they've done such a good job of bringing up to market-leading standards in every other area?
