Valtteri Bottas (P4, 12 pts): 8/10
Perhaps one of the most surprising moments of the race was when Valtteri Bottas came on the Mercedes team radio to say that the team should have listened to him about going for a two-stop strategy. Fair enough, he's probably right; but it's still rare to hear a driver at a top team criticise the management quite so bluntly and publicly. It's not the first time this season Bottas has spoken out but this one had extra edge, and you can see why: the race appeared to confirm that whatever decisions Mercedes make, it's always in support of Lewis Hamilton and everything (and everyone) else is expendable. Certainly it felt that Bottas deserved better after bouncing back to form after an abject time in Baku than to be deployed once again as Hamilton's loyal wingman and mobile chicane to hold back Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez in the final laps. Without that second stop he could do neither and was essentially hung out to dry, so that despite a strong weekend overall he ended up off the podium and feeling distinctly unloved.
Sergio Perez (P3, 15 pts): 9/10
As we've said a few times this season, Sergio Perez has been hired by Red Bull to play a part in the team's wider race strategy and to be waiting in the wings should anything happen to Max Verstappen. And once again, following his victory in Baku, he played this part to perfection for the squad and proved that now he's found his feet after his mid-winter transfer he's achieving a consistency that was lacking from his predecessors in the second Red Bull. There was a bit of a blip on Friday afternoon where he was a full second off Verstappen's pace, which carried over into FP3, but he was still fast enough in qualifying to put the car onto the second row of the grid where his presence made it much harder for Mercedes to strategise their way out of trouble in the race. Long known for his ability as a 'tyre whisperer', Perez displayed this talent again on Sunday: after going seven laps longer at the start than Valtteri Bottas, his set of the hard compound then had enough life in them to allow him to cruise past the struggling Finn on lap 49 and claim another podium, contributing to Red Bull's growing lead in the constructors standings.
