It started out as something of a slow-burner, but the Spanish Grand Prix eventually roared into life with the thrilling final few laps.
Oscar Piastri glided to a fifth win of the season to extend his championship lead to 10 points from Lando Norris, and Max Verstappen imploded in the final laps.
But what of a team that scored its best result in over three years, and just how bad was it for Lewis Hamilton?
They all feature in the Winners and Losers from the 2025 F1 Spanish Grand Prix.
Winner - McLaren
What was that about flexi-wings?
Much of the talk coming into the weekend was the impact of the FIA's flexi-wing clampdown, but McLaren simply made a mockery of that.
At what is perhaps the most aero-dependent track on the calendar, it topped every session of the weekend, and its fastest race lap was 1.2s quicker than the next best, which was Max Verstappen, although these were set the lap after the safety car restart.
It was about as crushing a performance as you're likely to find and was reminiscent of the Mercedes heyday in Barcelona. Given Ferrari, Red Bull, and Mercedes all have one gremlin or another to deal with at the moment, McLaren's 10th constructors' crown already looks a certainty, 197 points clear of Ferrari.
All in all, a sobering weekend for the teams now fighting firmly for second place.
Loser - Max Verstappen
Where to begin?
Firstly, Verstappen was geniuely in the mix for second place in the race, despite his various gripes with the car including the brakes, the clutch and performance in low-speed corners.
Red Bull's three-stop strategy was working well and he was locked onto the back of Norris for second place. Piastri was perhaps too far out of reach, but a P2 spot was certainly possible.
The one thing Verstappen's three-stopper did not need after the final stop, was a safety car. That would leave him with the only fresh tyres being a new set of hards, a terrible race tyre.
Instead of going through and earning track position, Red Bull swapped the eight-lap old softs for the mediums, and this, coupled with nearly binning it on the restart, the contact with Charles Leclerc and then being rammed off by Russell made for a devastating cocktail.
We saw the result of that frustration.
Put simply, Verstappen used his car as a weapon and crashed into a rival, on purpose without any regard for fellow drivers, marshals, fans, Russell or even himself. Although it was a relatively low-speed collision, you simply do not use your car in this way. Much like Sebastian Vettel in the 2017 Azerbaijan GP when he rammed Lewis Hamilton, Verstappen should count himself lucky he was not disqualified on the spot.
Winner - Nico Hulkenberg/Stake
This was not a fluke performance from Nico Hulkenberg, whose fifth place was the best for Stake since it was Alfa Romeo and Valtteri Bottas finished fifth at the 2022 Emilia Romagna GP.
For Hulkenberg, it is his best since the 2019 Italian GP, when he was fifth for Renault.
As he explained post-race, part of the key was the fact that he was eliminated in Q1, thus giving him lots of new, fresh sets of tyres for the race on a weekend where the C2 medium and even the C3 soft were the favoured race tyres.
His move on Hamilton to nab sixth place, which ultimately turned into fifth was earned and a little sobering, it must be said for Hamilton.
An upgrade package moved Stake firmly into the midfield batch and team-mate Gabriel Bortoleto also put in his strongest performance of the season so far, but finished 12th, although he did out-qualify Hulkenberg.
For such a performance to come at such a car and aero-dependent track as Barcelona is a huge positive for a team in need of a boost after a tricky start. It is now up to eighth in the constructors' up from 10th, also known as last.
Loser - Red Bull
In qualifying, Yuki Tsunoda was simply unlucky.
Whilst Verstappen was in second place in Q1, Tsunoda was just 0.587s behind. A large gap, yes, but in previous seasons with a large field spread, he was a devastating P20.
The race fared little better from the pit-lane after a rear-wing change as he took 13th place, although three places were made up by Lance Stroll's withdrawal and the retirements of Alex Albon and Kimi Antonelli. A further place was then made up for Ollie Bearman's time penalty for colliding with Liam Lawson.
The question is what on earth does Red Bull do with its second car? Sergio Perez was no mug, nor was Liam Lawson, and now, in the space of a few months, a third driver is about to be burned by that poisoned chalice.
If Verstappen does decide to leave, Red Bull is in serious trouble.
Winner - Oscar Piastri
After a couple of iffy performances in the Imola race and then throughout Monaco, this was a statement win from Piastri.
Lando Norris had nibbled his championship lead from 16 points down to just three but Piastri hit back in outstanding fashion.
Fastest in every single session of the weekend bar FP1, he also set the fastest lap by 0.444s, and led 60 of the 66 laps, only losing to Verstappen through the pit-stops of Laps 23-28.
This was about as crushing a performance as you can get.
Loser - Lewis Hamilton
This was a puzzling performance from Hamilton.
So far this year, the trend has been for qualifying to be poor, with stronger race pace but this was flipped in Barcelona.
After qualifying, Hamilton was relatively upbeat, and felt he could challenge for a podium place from fifth. His start was strong as well, looking to get past Norris for third place, before he lost the DRS and the rot set in.
He was ordered to let Leclerc past and then his pace dropped like a stone. It is extremely worrying that he did not have any idea where the pace went and why he was struggling so badly, especially as Leclerc looks like he is getting on top of the SF-25.
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