Each race weekend, Edd Straw fields questions from The Race Members' Club about his Formula 1 driver rankings - justifying his decisions as well as explaining the methodology that helps him reach his final order in a bonus podcast exclusive to the Members' Club.

The Japanese Grand Prix weekend was as fascinating a weekend as any for the end result, not least because it was vastly different from our Members' Club's own aggregate ranking.

Take a look below at some of Edd's responses and, if you like what you see, why not sign up to the Members' Club for your chance to ask him questions about future rankings and hear his full post-Japanese GP debrief?

Why wasn't Leclerc #1?

This question centred around Charles Leclerc dropping time in qualifying to another deployment quirk, like the one he experienced in sprint qualifying in China.

Should that have been factored out, or was Edd right to include that in his assessment criteria?

"I decided Leclerc couldn't have been first and instead topped that notional 'second tier', which is still a very high tier.

"The reason is that, firstly, yes, he did have a China-esque moment, but nonsense as it is - and it is ridiculous - you have got to drive the cars like they're on rails and not have those moments. That's a driver challenge. It's a stupid driver challenge, but it is the job now. And Leclerc had that in China, so he knows all about it, knows he has not to do it; there was also, I think, another moment, which was out of Spoon. So by his own admission, he didn't do the best job personally in Q3.

"That's the only thing that I felt just dropped him back that little bit. So that's why Leclerc was fourth. But it's a good fourth, quite frankly."

What separate Gasly from his fellow 'tier one' drivers

Pierre Gasly topped the rankings this week after qualifying at the head of the midfield for Alpine, then keeping Max Verstappen behind him all race in a Red Bull that was, on a balance, a marginally faster package.

He's one of a group of midfielders who have started the season impressively; but does Gasly have one of the best grips on the demands of these new regulations?

"Gasly was superb. Really, really impressive. There are stars in the midfield and ultimately, it comes down to the level of drivers being really, really, really high.

"And Gasly will be, at times, absolutely right at an elite, world-champion level. I still don't necessarily think he quite manages to do it week in, week out, and that's always going to mean, or at least for now, that he's a little bit more cast in the midfield; he will obviously disagree with that, which is fine because he's a Formula 1 driver and that's the mindset, so of course he should think that.

"But he puts in such high-class drives. It just so happened I had Gasly's onboard up quite a bit during the race...so that meant I was fairly on top of what he'd done in the race and the intelligence that he brought to it, it was really impressive.

"I was really impressed in Japan with his mindset, his thinking, the way he positioned the car early approaching the chicane, which meant there was no kind of Colapinto-type thing.

"He was really, really cognisant of everything he needed to do, getting feedback in terms of what Verstappen was doing, he was aware Verstappen was going to have a go on the last lap - that was a move that had been rehearsed and happened a few laps before and Gasly lost the place into the chicane and retook it because he knew he could.

"I think Gasly has consistently over the past years improved his game, upped his level, widened his window, and he'll probably keep doing that. It's going to be a long time before we can really say who's completely on top of these regulations, who's got the best grip or the worst grip, but right now Gasly is one of the more impressive on that side of things, certainly based on Suzuka."

Was Edd "way too hard" on Russell?

Did George Russell - who was 13th in Edd's ranking - avoid any significant missteps at Suzuka? And did he deserve more credit for the way he moved up the order before his pitstop?

"Russell was fine. Where is he? He's 13th. There was a high standard throughout the field, as I always say. So again, I didn't think it was particularly terrible, but he was throughout the weekend slower than Antonelli.

"Obviously he would have had a part in the set-up change [between qualifying and FP3] and yes, there was some misfortune as well, but fundamentally his race pace wasn't as quick, his qualifying pace wasn't as quick. If you look at it, the long runs on Friday, the short runs, the short runs on Saturday, the race...every step of the way in the weekend, he was the slower Mercedes driver by a chunk.

"So that for me had to put him down. And there were chances for him to get a better result."

What made Perez stand out so much?

Sergio Perez was seventh in Edd's rankings, having qualified 19th and finished 17th at Suzuka.

So what made him stand out so much to Edd, and how hard is it to judge the Cadillac drivers when they seem to be the only real benchmarks for one another?

"I've done a lot of trying to rate people at the back who don't have so many people to race, and it is tricky. The Aston Martin drivers have suffered in these rankings a little bit because of that.

"What made Perez stand out is he couldn't have qualified any higher, he couldn't have raced any better in terms of results, so he's ticked a few boxes there. He was conclusively faster than Bottas in almost all conditions. Bottas kept saying things were going well, so I don't think there are any specific Bottas problems to explain it.

"I just thought Perez was really, really convincing. I don't think anyone's getting better results in that Cadillac. It becomes difficult to work out if they absolutely maximised it and actually in qualifying, he had problems - the deployment wasn't there - so he could have been quicker. But there was a genuine problem external to him and that cost him a run.

"So I thought considering he lost one of his three runs in Q1, considering he outpaced Bottas so conclusively and Bottas is no slouch across all conditions, it had to go fairly high. But it is difficult and sometimes your mission is restricted when you're there."

Get Edd's full rankings debrief here.