Max Verstappen (P2, Fastest Lap, 19 pts): 9.5/10
One of the best things about Max Verstappen this season has been his consistently strong performances week in, week out. You can rely on him to be tangling with the two Mercedes drivers in every session. He was a bit slow to get going on Friday and was only sixth fastest, but he was second in the later session and the only person to finish any session faster than Lewis Hamilton when he was quickest in FP3. Qualifying saw him relegated to the second row alongside his Red Bull team mate, but this was actually good news for Verstappen as it was the 'racing line' side of the grid that immediately enabled him to take second place from Valtteri Bottas and settle in behind Hamilton. The restart flipped that and put him on the dirty side of the grid that had taken its toll on Bottas, but Verstappen seemed to have little trouble with it at the restart. After that he spent virtually the entire evening running in second, making a brief appearance in the lead on lap 20 when Hamilton pitted. He kept the pressure on the leader but could find no way to catch let alone pass Hamilton for victory, and so Red Bull settled for a late pit stop for fresh tyres to allow them to take the bonus point for the fastest race lap. It's hard to see what more Verstappen could have done this week.
Lewis Hamilton (Pole P1, 25 pts): 10/10
Lewis Hamilton didn't even rate in the top five in the official driver of the day poll, and yet here we are giving him a rare perfect ten out of ten for Bahrain. How come? Well, very simply, we can't actually find anything that he did wrong all weekend. He was fastest in both of Friday's practice sessions, and then topped each and every round of qualifying on his way to picking up another pole position by a comprehensive 0.289s over his Mercedes team mate. He then got a perfect launch from the grid not once but twice, and by the first completed lap at racing speed he was already out of DRS range of Max Verstappen. It's true that he didn't romp away into the distance after that, but it felt like he was carefully managing the situation and not wanting to stress the car, engine or tyres unnecessarily. Certainly everytime Verstappen came too close he was able to pull away again, resulting in Red Bull throwing in the towel and pitting Verstappen for fresh tyres to steal the bonus point for fastest lap. It looked very easy for Hamilton throughout, even though he insisted afterwards that it had been anything but: "It was such a demanding race, Max pushed me all the way and he had a lot of speed today." Maybe so; but Hamilton had all the answers again.
