This year's Formula 2 grid is one of the most talented ever.
Much of the talk has been around 17-year-old rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Lewis Hamilton's potential successor at Mercedes, and Oliver Bearman who announced himself as F1's next British star with a superb debut for Ferrari in Jeddah.
And there are several other new faces in F1's direct feeder series who are highly rated, so much so that some of those who competed in F2 last year have not been talked about much. Zane Maloney took that personally.
After the first two rounds of the new season, the Rodin Motorsport driver is the standings leader. His gap to his old team-mate Enzo Fittipaldi stands at 15 points, mostly thanks to a dream opening round of the season in Bahrain.
The Barbadian driver rose from eighth on the grid to win the Sprint race. And then he followed that up with the feature race victory a day later to secure his first F2 clean sweep and remind everyone that the rookies aren't going to have it all their own way this year.
"You don't expect two wins in the first weekend so to get that was amazing," he told Mirror Sport. "The goal and target was to get the pole and the feature race win - we didn't get pole so the weekend could still have been better!
"But to get the feature win was the main target and was amazing. Coming in from testing, we knew so far in this new car we've been quite on it, me as a driver and the team as well. The sprint win was a bonus to our weekend."
By his own admission, Maloney's first season at F2 level was a disappointment. He managed four feature race podiums last year but didn't taste victory once and finished 10th in the championship, well out of title contention.
But he knew he had shaken himself out of his slump in the final round. And so, when pre-season predictions were being made in January and February about who might be the stand-out performer in F2 this year, the 20-year-old was annoyed at how little his name was being mentioned.
He said: "Last year was very difficult, for reasons that shouldn't have happened. But in Abu Dhabi I got the confidence back, so going into the winter break last year I felt good because I knew what I needed to change to perform. It was quite a simple fix in my mind so, once I did that... I only see that as a positive.
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"I think I've been looked over. I didn't have a great season last year and I needed to remind myself of those F3 wins and that F3 season. I've had one year in which I didn't perform to my maximum, which was last year. In every other championship I've ever done, I've been at the front end.
"The rookies are strong, the second and third year drivers are strong - it's a very strong grid in general - but I see myself towards the top or at the very top of that list. Now, it's time to buckle down with the team and prove that I'm meant to be here."
As is the case with all drivers in Maloney's position, a spot on the F1 grid is the goal. He was cut from the Red Bull driver academy last year which was a blow, but has found a new home as a Sauber junior. The team's current F1 drivers, Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu, are out of contract at the end of the year.
Maloney would not be drawn on questions about a possible 2025 promotion or any talks with future team owners Audi: "My management takes care of all that stuff." But he feels he is in the right place, with Sauber and Rodin, and with a season of F2 experience under his belt, to put himself in a strong position.
He said: "I've learned a lot from the past and from Red Bull, but the next step was to go to Sauber and it's really worked out well. The support behind the scenes has been great and I've been getting a lot of information from very important and knowledgeable people.
"It couldn't have started any better - 36 points is I think a third of all the points I earned last year so it was a great start. Of course, my goal is the championship. My expectation of myself and the team's expectation of me is to go for the championship. It has started very well, but there is a lot of work to do. It's going to be a lot of hard work."