The Chinese Grand Prix wasn't the most exciting of races, especially compared to the season opener in Melbourne, but the weekend did make me even more excited for the year ahead than I did before it.
Across the sprint race, the main race and their respective qualifying sessions, we had four different teams and five different drivers sit on the front row, and nine of the 10 constructors now have points on the board already. It's looking like the tightest, most competitive grid in a long time.
The one caveat to that is that McLaren do look to have a decent gap to the rest of the field, but after what happened in Shanghai, I feel pretty confident that we can still have a title fight even if that remains the case.
Piastri powers into the picture
The fear heading into 2025 was that McLaren would dominate and Lando Norris would cruise to the title with Oscar Piastri playing second fiddle as he did for most of last year. In China though, the Aussie showed that he's ready to take the fight to his teammate.
He didn't just beat Norris, he dominated him. He was half a second faster in qualifying for the sprint race, finished six places and 17 seconds ahead in that race, took pole for the main event with the Brit 0.151s slower and then won with ease on Sunday, leading from start to finish.
Granted, Norris had brake problems towards the end of the race that cost him a lot of time but he was struggling to put Piastri under pressure even before that, with the race leader responding every time the Brit would close the gap.
He was so comfortable seeing the other McLaren and the rest of the field off too, seeming as if he'd barely broken a sweat when he spoke on the team radio and got out of his car after the race, as if this was the latest of many Formula 1 wins he'd claimed rather than just his third.
There's a sharp contrast to Norris there, with the 25-year-old continuing to struggle to keep his cool in high-pressure situations, letting the stress and nerves get to him and sometimes hamper his driving.
He's still the title favourite, but if Piastri can put him under such pressure, cracks could begin to appear and we could end up with our first intra-team title fight since Nico Rosberg got the better of Lewis Hamilton nine years ago.
A day of dreams and a day of disaster
What a difference a day makes.
After a disappointing opening round in Australia, Hamilton kickstarted his Ferrari career with a stunning start to the weekend in Shanghai, claiming his first victory in red by winning from pole position in the sprint race.
It felt like the beginning of a fairytale story. The seven-time world champion had out-qualified teammate Charles Leclerc, arguably the best qualifier on the grid, and then seen off old nemesis Max Verstappen in the race. Hamilton was back. Ferrari were back. The most decorated driver ever and the most decorated team ever had clicked. Who could stop them now?
Well, that was answered just a day later when this seemingly unstoppable force came into contact with the most immovable of objects: Ferrari's self-destruct button.
First, they made the inexplicable decision to hugely change the setup on the car that had just finished top in sprint qualifying and the race that followed, and Hamilton qualified down in P5 as a result. And then, after Leclerc and the Brit came home in P5 and P6 respectively, it was discovered that said setups were also illegal, causing both drivers to be disqualified.
Leclerc's car came in underweight due to the tyres being too worn while Hamilton's had excessive wear to the skid plank due to the ride height being too low. Both of these are avoidable issues that a team like Ferrari should absolutely be avoiding, and while you can let a team off for these kinds of errors if they happen once in a blue moon, the Scuderia self-sabotage themselves time and time again.
Hamilton has racked up more historic achievements than any driver in the history of the sport, but turning this team into a well-oiled winning machine as he did at Mercedes would be right up there with his biggest.
With Lawson languishing, it's time for Red Bull to have a rethink
The one consolation for Ferrari is that they're not too far behind Red Bull in the standings, and they have one man to thank for that.
Everybody knew that Liam Lawson was going to struggle in his first full season on the grid - there are few tougher jobs in sport than being Max Verstappen's teammate - but even his biggest doubters wouldn't have expected him to be at the very back of the field.
The New Zealander finished rock bottom in both qualifying sessions in China and didn't come close to fighting his way into the points in either race, instead battling it out with the backmarkers. It was a weekend that made Sergio Perez, who was replaced by Lawson because of his poor performances last season, look like the reincarnation of Ayrton Senna in comparison.
So poor was it that it's now being widely reported that Red Bull are thinking about replacing Lawson with Yuki Tsunoda for the next race, but while I think that would be the right call given Tsunoda should've been given the nod in the first place, Red Bull need to change much more than just their drivers.
Lawson is the fourth driver in a row that has hugely struggled to adapt their driving style to a car that suits Verstappen's, so it's time to make Verstappen adapt instead. He's unquestionably more talented than whoever they put alongside him and so is going to be much more capable of adjusting.
When developing the car, when introducing upgrades, focus on what would make Lawson or Tsunoda or whoever Verstappen's teammate is more comfortable rather than what would get the best out of the world champion. That would maybe make the Dutchman slightly slower initially but it wouldn't take him too long to adapt and would yield far more points for the team in the long run.
The problem with such an approach is that it would risk upsetting Verstappen at a time when his future with the team is uncertain, but that may be a risk worth taking given they're likely to end the season with no titles and fourth place in the team standings if their second driver can't deliver.
