Pierre Gasly (P6, 4 pts): 8/10
Pierre Gasly is proving to be just what AlphaTauri needs right now, a reliable and consistent performer who always manages to deliver to the best of his and the AT02's ability. He was third fastest in opening practice, exactly half a second off pace setter Valtteri Bottas, and he got faster and closer to the top in terms of time throughout the remaining sessions. It would have been a shock if he'd failed to make it into the final round of qualifying, and he duly navigated the conditions with aplomb to put himself into sixth place on the grid having moved to within 1.4s of Max Verstappen's pole position time. If the race had gone ahead as planned, then with the likes of George Russell, Daniel Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel lining up as targets ahead of him, there's every chance that he would have been fighting for a podium. Unfortunately he never got the chance to confirm or deny that suggestion, which has to count as an opportunity lost through no fault of his own.
Sebastian Vettel (P5, 5 pts): 9.5/10
We're giving Sebastian Vettel a full extra point this weekend for that short, 15 second moment at the start of the final round of qualifying when he arrived on the scene of Lando Norris' huge shunt. He'd already asked his pit wall if the McLaren driver was okay, but when he arrived at the scene he still felt the need to stop his Aston Martin to check for himself, and didn't move on again until his thumbs-up was returned. Letting a dazed Norris know he wasn't alone at that moment and that help was on its way was a small and yet huge act of simple human kindness and empathy, and frankly it brings tears to our eyes just thinking about it. Overall it was a good weekend for Vettel who was in the top eight throughout practice and the first driver on Saturday afternoon to tell race control to throw the red flag in Q3, prophetically just seconds before Norris' accident. He might have been through a tough time in the last couple of years but this was Vettel back at his best, both as a driver and as a person, a four-time world champion who knows his craft inside out and is a genuine class act to boot.
