Yuki Tsunoda (P6, 8 pts): 7.5/10
Despite his recent move to Faenza to benefit from more hands-on mentoring from AlphaTauri team principal Franz Tost, Yuki Tsunoda is still rather too prone to making costly mistakes as his accident on Friday morning all too starkly demonstrated. The damage was so extensive he was only able to complete a single flying lap in FP2 which inevitably left him off the pace for the rest of the weekend. He duly missed the cut at the end of the first round of qualifying, and the strange sound you could hear in the background was probably Red Bull consultant Helmut Marko grinding his teeth in frustration. But all that changed on Sunday afternoon, when the first lap conflagration at the front enabled the Japanese rookie to propel himself up to fifth place by the time the safety car was scrambled and the red flag came out. He lost out to Carlos Sainz and Pierre Gasly in the pit stops and team orders meant he nestled in behind his team mate for the rest of the afternoon to cross the line in a commendable seventh place, with Tsunoda proving as voluble as ever on the team radio after the finish.
Pierre Gasly (P5, Fastest lap, 11 pts): 9/10
Pierre Gasly was in the top six in both of Friday's practice sessions, and went on to deliver on this promise in qualifying when he narrowly pipped Lando Norris to fifth place on the grid, putting him alongside the McLaren for Sunday's race. The pair had very different fates in what ensued: Norris was able to jump up to third place only to get taken out by a late-braking Valtteri Bottas, while Gasly lost time dodging first that incident and then the separate clash between Lance Stroll and Charles Leclerc, which left him down in 12th place by the time he recovered. At this point just getting back into the points looked like a tall order, especially when he then got stuck behind Max Verstappen for 15 laps. But once he picked his way past the damaged Red Bull, Gasly was able to fall in behind Fernando Alonso and climb to fifth place. After that, a second pit stop meant he had to navigate his way around Nicholas Latifi before team orders helped put him ahead of AlphaTauri team mate Yuki Tsunoda. By this time a recovering Lewis Hamilton had passed them both, and sixth place was the best Gasly could hope for, but a late switch to the soft tyres helped him take the bonus point for fastest lap on the final lap of the race.
