Nicholas Latifi (P18): 5/10
After a promising start to the season, things seem to have gone back into reverse at Williams in both qualifying and race trim. One can only hope that it's a quirk of the heat or the Catalunya circuit and not a long range weather forecast for those at Grove. Latifi did at least have the satisfaction of being faster than his two team mates (Roy Nissany and George Russell) in Friday's practice sessions, but Russell was ahead again on Sunday and Latifi was duly left to start the race from the back row of the grid. A poor first lap and struggles on the first set of medium tyres effectively sealed his fate, and after that he spent pretty much the entire race on his own in last place. He was handed a consolation prize in the last few laps when he was able to pass Romain Grosjean, but it was little to cheer about.
George Russell (P17): 6/10
Missing out on Friday's first practice session (to allow reserve driver Roy Nissany some time in the seat) put George Russell on the backfoot from the start, and he was slowest of anyone on Friday afternoon. While he picked up on Saturday, he was still quite far off repeating his recent feat of making it through to the second round of qualifying. Instead he found himself lining up for the race itself in 18th place, his worst showing of the season. At least he got some enjoyment out of Sunday's campaign, with a good start on soft tyres and some entertaining battles with those ahead of him which saw him running as high as 15th place before losing two spots in the closing stages to Kimi Raikkonen and Kevin Magnussen, leaving him back down in 17th. "We used an alternative strategy to our main rivals and it didn't pay off, but we had to in our position," he said.
