Formula 1's 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix didn't provide the chaos of last year's inaugural race but did provide a mixed-up pecking order, an unexpected one-two and a title-clinching fifth-place finish.
Here are our picks for the winners and losers:
Winner: Max Verstappen
Not really a winner on the strength of Saturday, given third suddenly turned into fifth in that final stint, and not really a winner on the strength of the weekend because if we put him in every time he was the top-performing Red Bull driver he'd take up permanent residence in this column.
But it's one thing to seal a title in advance with obvious nonchalance when in a dominant car - and it's another to do so when you're driving for a team that will almost certainly finish third in this year's constructors' standings.
How many times has Max Verstappen left points on the table this season? Only two prominent examples come to mind, and in both cases - whether fairly or not - he effectively ensured his main title rival also came up short of his maximum score.
It has been a masterwork of a season, both Verstappen's best title yet and perhaps the best one we have seen in the hybrid era of F1. - Val Khorounzhiy
Loser: McLaren
The drivers' title was obviously super-gone in Brazil already, and McLaren and Norris may be able to soothe themselves - looking at a day like Saturday at Vegas - that it was actually never on to begin with.
But if this was always going to be a damage limitation race versus Ferrari in the constructors' standings, it should be a worry that it was Mercedes doing the damage limitation for McLaren instead.
Today McLaren was an outlier in a bad way among its 'big four' peers - being overtaken with ease by rivals, incapable of hanging in there in the fight and ultimately cut desperately adrift.
It is a favourite for Qatar, which pays out more points thanks to being a sprint event, so the 24-point lead over Ferrari is still pretty robust - but it no longer feels very safe, and McLaren will not appreciate the reminder that its car, seen for much of the season as the grid's true all-rounder, is still capable of having days like these. - VK
Loser: Williams
Alpine's double podium at Interlagos ended Williams's season as a competitive proposition, turning it instead into a printing press for crash damage repair bills.
Alex Albon making the finish today in the points wasn't going to change the fact the three teams up ahead are unreachable and the only team behind is a non-factor - but it sure would've felt nice given how much pain has been in through various on-track calamities, in terms of finances and in terms of man-hours.
Having to retire Albon instead simply added insult to injury of a season that has totally unravelled. "It feels like it's been just a very weird last couple of months," Albon himself admitted. "Where it's just never gone our way.
"So... it'll turn eventually. The guys and girls, everyone's strong, everyone knows we've just got to stay strong through it all, basically." - VK
Winner: Mercedes
Having spent the majority of 2024 as F1's fourth-fastest team and near enough all of the second half of the season in that spot, Mercedes returned to dominant form in style in Vegas.
There's no guarantee this will continue for Qatar and Abu Dhabi but it's at least some kind of highlight Mercedes can point to in the latter half of 2024.
And as team boss Toto Wolff pointed out, the team has collected a tonne of data from when the W15 is in its sweet spot. Now it's all about replicating it every weekend so that the next Mercedes victory is far less of an outlier. - Josh Suttill
Loser: Alpine
After a double podium in Brazil, Pierre Gasly qualifying third for the Las Vegas GP pointed to further potential constructors’ championship gains.
Fight for sixth post-Vegas
6 Haas 50
7 Alpine -1
8 RB -4
9 Williams -33
But a power unit issue ruled him out and the team dropped a place in the championship behind a rejuvenated Haas. Esteban Ocon was never in the conversation and missed his pitbox during a stop - it looked like his team wasn’t out in the pitlane ready for him - further adding to its woe. - JB
Winner: Lewis Hamilton
It was George Russell who ultimately won in Vegas, but perhaps Lewis Hamilton was just as big a winner in how the race played out.
Russell was briefly under threat early but Mercedes clearly had the fastest package and Hamilton used it to move from 10th to second.
In light of recent comments by Toto Wolff about drivers having a shelf life and Hamilton’s qualifying error while his team-mate scored pole, this was the ultimate bounceback.
It hasn’t answered all the questions about whether Hamilton is still operating at his top level over one lap, but after many condemning him to the scrapheap this year, this race might be the catalyst for his rejuvenation in the last two round and a much better lead-in into his Ferrari switch. - JB
Loser: Ferrari
Ferrari is a winner in the sense that it gained some ground on McLaren in the constructors' championship race but it's a loser for not taking a bigger chunk out of it.
The expectations for Vegas were much higher and while the excellent tyre warm-up trait that made it so potent in Vegas last year has been somewhat sacrificed for a better all-round car this year, it wasn't expecting to be thoroughly beaten by Mercedes.
Team boss Fred Vasseur suspects things would have gone differently had Charles Leclerc passed Russell early on in the race. But Leclerc didn't. Instead he had a dramatic tyre drop-off and later angst after feeling as if agreements with team-mate Carlos Sainz hadn't been respected.
McLaren's unlikely to be this weak again so Ferrari may regret a missed chance to strike a bigger blow. - JS
Winner: Nico Hulkenberg
"You're the tyre-managing guy now!" was race engineer Gary Gannon's reaction to Hulkenberg's drive - which briefly looked like it was going to be the stereotypical Hulk race of turning an above-par grid position into a below-par final result, but was instead the driver and team totally maximising opportunities.
Hulkenberg's first stint had been extended substantially relative to the median, and it set him up for an eye-catching race of moving forward with an ever-present tyre offset - which culminated in a late overtake on Yuki Tsunoda.
Given every car from the 'big four' finished, Haas being able to leapfrog Alpine in the standings - not without help from Alpine, but still - is quite an achievement going into the final two rounds, even if the job is obviously far from done.
A word for Tsunoda, too, an unofficial honorary 'winner' on the strength of his weekend as a whole when compared to the weekends of every other driver being mentioned in connection to that second Red Bull seat - including incumbent Sergio Perez, who drove a nice enough recovery race but was still three tenths behind Tsunoda at the flag. - VK
Loser: Sauber
With a new upgrade, Zhou Guanyu starting 13th on the grid and then having a strong start to the race, you could be forgiven for thinking Sauber could finally score a point.
However, Zhou was shuffled out of the points and only finished a second clear of Franco Colapinto, who started from the pitlane, in 13th.
You could argue Zhou ran too long on his hards in the second stint but really the Sauber simply slipped back to a more natural position behind much faster cars.
"I believe we maximised the result we could have had with our pace," was Zhou's verdict.
He at least got to run a fair few laps in the top 10 but he ultimately finished where he started - and Sauber is two weekends away from a point-less season. - JB
