Fernando Alonso (Retired, Lap 50): 7.5/10
You certainly can't criticise Fernando Alonso's level of passion and commitment since his return to Formula 1 after a two year sabbatical from the sport. Any doubt that he wasn't fully investing his heart and soul into the job this weekend would have been dispelled by the back-and-forth over the Alpine team radio over how the stewards intervened in his battle with Alfa Romeo pair Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi. The former world champion thrives in moments like this and he seemed to be everywhere on track during the first half of the race, not necessarily to the best effect but always greatly entertaining, and something vital went out of the race when he was finally forced to retire with rear wing damage. "We need to analyse it because at the moment we're not sure why it happened," he said afterwards. With Esteban Ocon suffering a similar fate it meant that it was Alpine's first double DNF of the year, and only the second time in 2021 that they have failed to score points - the first being the season opener in Bahrain.
Nikita Mazepin (P17): 3/10
Well, that was a real mess of a weekend for Nikita Mazepin, wasn't it? There's not much you can really say in the Russian's favour: he just never seemed to get a grip on the circuit at any point. He was over seven seconds off the pace in FP1 (and three and a half seconds off Mick Schumacher's best time). He clawed some of that back in FP2 but had the most extraordinarily poor final practice where he failed to get a single clean lap in, leaving him half a minute down in the timesheets with his times getting deleted one after another for exceeding track limits. Even so, he somehow still managed to annoy other drivers by tripping them up. It's just as well he finally put in a proper lap in qualifying otherwise there has to be a real risk that the stewards would have decided against waving him through on the 107 per cent rule. Although they might have been doing a favour if they had benched him for the race because he suffered an immediate problem in the cockpit: "At turn two on the opening lap the headrest came off in my car. It was quite a sketchy lap because my headrest lifted and blocked both of my mirrors. I had to ask the team if there was anyone around me, hoping there wasn't because I couldn't know where to turn in or not. Then that's over 25 seconds of race time for an unnecessary pitstop." If there was a way of finishing lower than dead last, we're confident that Mazepin would have found a way on Sunday.
