Valtteri Bottas (P8, 4 pts): 8/10
We're going to be kind to Valtteri Bottas this week. While he should certainly have finished higher up than eighth place, a large part of that was down to bad luck and he's to be commended for managing to fight back to the extent he did after that awful start. Certainly there was nothing wrong with his form in practice where he was consistently in the top three alongside Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, and he duly played his part in cementing Mercedes' latest front row lockout in qualifying. Unfortunately it left him on the 'wrong' side of the grid for the start and he was painfully slow to get away when the lights went out. Race control handed him a couple of those spots back for the restart, but then there was more disaster for the Finn when he suffered a puncture, presumably from debris resulting from the earlier events at turn 3. That dropped him all the way back to 16th, and it made for a long slog for the rest of the evening as he fought his way back up the order despite running a bigger wing than most of those around him, making overtaking more difficult than usual. Unbelievably Bottas suffered a second puncture in the final laps, but this time the Gods were kind to him and the safety car for Sergio Perez' retirement allowed him to nurse the car home in the points.
Daniel Ricciardo (P7, 6 pts): 7.5/10
Renault showed encouraging pace on Friday with Daniel Ricciardo finishing FP2 fifth fastest, which he nearly went on to match in qualifying the following day, although he was also just 0.002s quicker than his current team mate Esteban Ocon. Ocon continued to nip at the senior man's ankles throughout the race on Sunday, and it's certainly the closest we've seen the pair all season. But in general Renault lacked a little sparkle this weekend, and Ricciardo was clear in his post-race comments that his heart hadn't really been in it following Romain Grosjean's terrifying accident which had left everyone in the paddock shaken: "The result today does not matter so much after that and it's a bit of an afterthought. To see him escape and walk away was a relief," he said after criticising the saturation replays of the incident. However there was still a job to do, and Ricciardo took comfort in the pair picking up eight points between them - which could yet prove crucial in deciding the battle for third place in the constructors championship with McLaren, Racing Point and Ferrari.
