Fernando Alonso (P6, 8 pts): 8/10
After a rocky start to the season which had many wondering whether it had been a good idea for Fernando Alonso to return to Formula 1 after two years away, the two time world champion is looking much more like his old self these days and had a good time in Baku, albeit within the limits of the Alpine hardware. He was consistently and comfortably in the top ten throughout practice, although the mayhem in qualifying meant it was a bit of a squeak to get into the final top ten pole shoot-out round. Starting the race from eighth, he got a quick jump on Yuki Tsunoda but lost out badly by making an early pit stop on lap 7 that left him running in 14th place. He was passed by the equally early-stopping Lando Norris but thereafter gradually made progress, tucking in behind Daniel Ricciardo for a spell until a recovering Carlos Sainz forced his way through on lap 26. Alonso looked set to miss out on the points, but Max Verstappen's accident, Lewis Hamilton's run-off and his own efforts at the final restart in which he took revenge on Ricciardo and Sainz plus another pass on Tsunoda provided a spectacular finish to the day and the Spaniard's best result since joining Alpine.
Lando Norris (P5, 10 pts): 7.5/10
Lando Norris was unhappy to receive a three place grid penalty for the race for a breach of red flag rules during qualifying: he'd been close to the end of a flying lap when Antonio Giovinazzi crashed and race control suspended the session. Norris should have returned to pit lane at the earliest opportunity but had only a second to react, and dithered by asking the team for advice by which time it was too late, he was past pit entry. A perfectly understandable response, but the rules are the rules and the stewards were actually rather more understanding than usual in not making it a five place drop. Outside this incident, Norris was comfortably the fastest McLaren at Baku and easily made it into Q3, only to suffer a terrible start to the race which lost him a further three places on top of his penalty and meant he spent the opening laps tussling with Daniel Ricciardo for track position. Once the pit stops were dealt with, things settled down and Norris enjoyed a quiet afternoon running behind Yuki Tsunoda from lap 13 until the red flag on lap 49. The restart enabled him to jump the AlphaTauri and claim fifth place, which was a good way to finish. It's just a shame he hadn't been able to start from sixth as he was supposed to.
