Pierre Gasly (P6, 8 pts): 8/10
His maiden victory at Monza already seems a long time ago for Pierre Gasly, who crashed out early at Mugello and was only ninth last time out in Sochi. This was a much better outing for the young Frenchman, although he narrowly missed out on making it through to the final round of qualifying and started the race from 12th place, one spot ahead of his team mate Daniil Kvyat. Beginning the race on medium tyres, he got ambushed by a fast-starting Antonio Giovinazzi when the lights went out on Sunday, and then lost out to Kevin Magnussen on the second lap. After that he got stuck in and had a thoroughly rewarding time of it for the rest of the afternoon: "It was good fun, I had a lot of battles on track: attacking, defending, all sorts of situations. I really enjoyed it out there!" The late safety car put him back on the lead lap, and once the race resumed he got the better of Romain Grosjean and Charles Leclerc to claim a top six finish although Carlos Sainz remained stubbornly out of reach. It's his best performance and result since that memorable late summer day in Monza.
Carlos Sainz (P5, 10 pts): 7.5/10
Carlos Sainz was somewhat at a disadvantage this weekend: finally getting his hands on McLaren's new aero upgrades for the MCL35, he was then robbed of any time to get used to them after the cancellation of all practice running on Friday. That goes a long way to explaining why he was slower by a significant margin to his team mate Lando Norris on Saturday, and he did well to make it through to the final round of qualifying and put himself into tenth place on the grid for the race. It was still looking something of a slog for Sainz on Sunday, Norris remaining the faster man and eventually climbing up to third place over the opening stint. But then Norris reported problems with his power unit (newly installed this weekend) and on lap 34 Sainz caught and passed his clearly ailing team mate, whose eventual retirement on lap 43 brought out a safety car and left Sainz as the team's sole representative in fifth place at the restart. They were in safe hands, and he protected the position all the way to the finish, picking up valuable points for McLaren in their ongoing battle with Racing Point.
