Sergio Perez (P8, 4 pts): 8.5/10
It would appear churlish for us to dock points for Sergio Perez' qualifying calamity, when the blame for misjudging the extent of track evolution toward the end of the first round has to be fall largely on the shoulders of the Red Bull strategists, compounded with the antics of other drivers blocking pit lane as they jockeyed for position. It had all combined to leave Perez without enough time to commence his own final lap. After Perez was consigned to a dismal 16th place, the team did the only sensible thing they could by loading every new component onto the car they could think of to hopefully see Perez through the rest of the season, even if it meant a pit lane start here at Zandvoort. And you have to say that Perez did better in such circumstances than anyone would have reasonably expected: true, he won from the back at Sakhir last year, but this is a much harder track to pass on. Despite making an early first stop on lap 8 after flat spotting his tyres, Perez marched his way forward to seventh place by lap 42. A second stop cost him four places, but he soon resumed his forward progress with passes on both McLarens and then striking at Esteban Ocon with three laps to go. It's not quite enough to help Red Bull overtake Mercedes in the constructors standings this week, but a rather excellent recovery all the same.
Carlos Sainz (P7, 6 pts): 7.5/10
Finishing in the top three in both of Friday's free practice sessions, Carlos Sainz headed into Saturday buoyed with confidence. Unfortunately the Ferrari driver's campaign hit problems 20 minutes into final practice when he spun on the approach to Zandvoort's banked turn 3 and broadsided the barriers leaving the Ferrari pit crew with a lot of work to do before the start of qualifying. In the circumstances team and driver did well to get through to Q3 and line up alongside Charles Leclerc on the third row of the grid. Sainz spent all but ten of the 72 laps of the race in sixth place, virtually all of them behind Leclerc, complaining after his switch to the hard compound that he had never felt so slow in a race. He will certainly have been annoyed to be out-sprinted by Fernando Alonso on the final lap depriving him of two of the championship points that by this point he must have thought were in the bag.
