Carlos Sainz (P10, 0.5 pt): 6.5/10
Ferrari started the weekend off brightly enough, and Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz were both in the top five at the end of first practice. But Sainz seemed to go into reverse in the subsequent sessions and dropped out of the top ten, and this was confirmed by his performance in qualifying where neither he nor Leclerc made it through to the final round, Ferrari racing director Laurent Mekies admitting afterwards that "Our qualifying performance was well below our usual standard". Sergio Perez' pre-race accident and grid penalties for Lando Norris and Valtteri Bottas subsequently promoted Sainz to tenth, and ultimately Sainz became the first driver to win exactly half a championship point since Nico Rosberg did likewise in the abandoned 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix. It's surely inevitable he will now carry through that annoying fractional amount for the rest of the season, but at least he's in good company with Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen similarly afflicted in the drivers championship standings.
Nicholas Latifi (P9, 1 pts): 8/10
Once again, Nicholas Latifi's achievements this weekend have been eclipsed by the supernova antics of his team mate George Russell. Let's be honest, it's not so long ago that the prospect of a Williams driver making it into Q2 would have been hailed as a tremendous accomplishment -, before Russell made it a routine event. It was a fine way for the Canadian to follow up clinching his maiden F1 championship points last time out in Hungary, and it would only get better when an accident for Sergio Perez and penalties for Valtteri Bottas and Lando Norris promoted him into the top ten on the grid for the start of Saturday's race. Of course, the pace of the FW43B is such that if there had been even a single lap of green flag running then he would have almost certainly have been barged aside by faster cars starting behind him; but of course, that didn't happen. Regardless of the circumstances, how long has it been since the last time that both Williams cars finished in the points in consecutive races? Our minds are officially just a tiny bit blown.
