Antonio Giovinazzi (P16): 6.5/10
Like Haas, Alfa Romeo looks to be firmly stuck in the doldrums as the 2020 season draws to a close. Certainly Antonio Giovinazzi showed few signs of life in Bahrain, although at least his practice results were on a modest upward curve - 16th, 15th, 14th. He gave him a chance of avoiding the cut at the end of the first round of qualifying but in the end he missed out by just 0.027s (although admittedly the man just ahead, Lando Norris, was able to call off his final run when he saw Giovinazzi fall short). He had a terrific start to the race and was up to 11th, but lost three of those places when race control crunched the numbers to decide the restart order following the red flag. He then lost a bunch more when the race resumed. Lapped by the leaders on lap 44, he was in 13th place when he saw an opportunity to pit for soft tyres during the safety car for Sergio Perez' retirement. Unfortunately it was too late in the day and the race remained under yellow to the end, meaning that the stop had cost him three spots in the final classification.
Kimi Raikkonen (P15): 7/10
Faring little better than his Alfa Romeo team mate this weekend, Kimi Raikkonen missed out on first practice in favour of Robert Kubica which might explain why he was on the back foot and behind Antonio Giovinazzi for the rest of the practice and qualifying sessions. Starting from 17th on the grid on Sunday, he was immediately involved in a clash and went off; it was potentially his move to rejoin the track at the exit of turn 3 that caused Romain Grosjean to sweep across the front of Daniil Kvyat with such horrifying results. The restart was no better for Raikkonen and he received damage to his front wing, forcing the team to make an earlier than planned first stop on lap 17. Even so the car's aerodynamic performance had been seriously compromised, and in the circumstances Raikkonen did well to wring out everything he did from the C39. However in this case it meant he found himself battling (and unsuccessfully at that) with the sluggish Williams of Nicholas Latifi - hardly something that a former world champion and the sport's most experienced driver of all time will have found particularly fitting.
