Daniel Ricciardo (P14): 7/10
Daniel Ricciardo was feeling pretty bullish about his chances this weekend after finishing Friday practice third fastest. The Renault proved itself again in qualifying which saw him secure fifth place on the grid despite some strong runs for Racing Point and AlphaTauri. Although he lost a place at the start of the race, Ricciardo was still running comfortably in the top six and staying in touch with the cars ahead of him throughout the opening stint until the decision to stick to medium tyres at the first pit stop backfired and things started to unravel from there. When he did finally take on a set of hards, the cold tyres contributed to a costly spin at turn 3 on lap 31 which dumped him out of the top ten. The team tried putting him back on mediums again for the closing stages of the race, but by then the damage had been done and the die cast.
Carlos Sainz (P13): 7/10
While Carlos Sainz did manage to gradually claw his way into the top ten over successive practice sessions, he was consistently slower than his young team mate on Friday and Saturday. Getting through to the final round of qualifying always looked like it was going to be a really big ask of the Spanish driver and in the end he couldn't quite pull it off, even though he was just two tenths slower than his team mate who did. Still, that allowed Sainz a free choice of tyre compound on which to start the race and he made good use of that with a long first stint on hard tyres during which time he rose to fourth place. Unfortunately when he did pit there was a problem with the wheelgun, and he plummeted to 13th by the time he returned to the fray from where there was little anyone could do to get things back on track.
