Lewis Hamilton (Pole, P9, 2 pts): 6/10
Okay, so Lewis Hamilton was feeling rather under the weather heading into the weekend, and a subdued performance from the reigning world champion was perhaps to be expected. But it's still unusual to see him make this many mistakes in a race, even allowing for the treacherous conditions in which he would normally excel. In Friday practice he had tried but failed to match the strong performances of both Ferraris, but with Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc sidelined with technical issues in qualifying he was essentially gifted pole position and it appeared that Lady Luck was once again on his side. A good start to the race saw Hamilton take the early lead and it seemed like business as usual for the first 29 laps. And then on lap 30 he ran wide at turn 16 and onto the low-grip drag strip, which put him into the tyre wall and damaged his front wing. A chaotic pit stop ensued which earned him a five second penalty for not following the correct procedure coming into pit lane. It dropped him out of the points, and a further spin while pushing hard to make up lost ground did further damage to his prospects. He ended the race just out of the top ten, but the post-race Alfa Romeo penalties promoted him back up to ninth - although we suspect that he'll take little consolation from the token two points.
