Sebastian Vettel (P6, 8 pts): 7.5/10
After his terrible start to the season in Austria, this weekend saw Sebastian Vettel back to something more like the four-time world champion that we used to know. For the first time in 2020 he seemed better hooked up in the SF1000 than his team mate, and was even fastest in Friday afternoon practice (admittedly with several key runners including both Mercedes having decided to sit the wet session out.) Both Ferraris made it through to the final round of qualifying (another first for 2020) and ended up sharing the third row of the grid, with Vettel ending up just in front. He got a decent start but rued not coming in a lap earlier to change his intermediates for slick tyres, a delay that proved costly and dropped him down to eighth place. It wasn't until he pitted a second time and took on a set of hard compound tyres to finish the race on that he finally found the space to make some progress and made his way up to fifth place. However he was overtaken by Alex Albon in the closing laps, and suffered the embarrassment of being lapped by the much faster Mercedes of race winner Lewis Hamilton, reminding everyone just how much work Ferrari has yet to do if it's to get back in the game.
Alexander Albon (P5, 10 pts): 7.5/10
Alex Albon was something of a cause for concern in practice when he was significantly slower than his Red Bull team mate in Friday and Saturday morning practice. He then had a tough qualifying session, suffering terribly from traffic everytime he tried to put in a flying lap, the blame for which must be shared with the team strategists on the pit wall. Certainly starting from 13th place on the grid was not what the Thai driver would have been hoping for this weekend. He made a good start and picked up places and then had a solid pit first pit stop that allowed him to maintain ninth place following his switch to slicks. Over the course of the rest of the afternoon he was able to dispense with both Ferraris and also forced his way past Daniel Ricciardo, but he will be disappointed to have been unable to find a way around Lance Stroll in the final laps. Fifth is a good result in the circumstances, but Red Bull had doubtless been hoping for even better from Albon this weekend.
