Mick Schumacher (P16): 6/10
On paper it looks like Mick Schumacher fared little better than his Haas team mate this weekend. Certainly the track did little favours as far as the lumpen VF-21 was concerned, and there wasn't much that either driver could realistically achieve at COTA. But the reality was that it was night and day between Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin: while the Russian floundered from first to last, Mick was at least able to make some headway and even pipped the two Williams in Friday afternoon practice. Although qualifying went as expected, he was promoted to 16th place on the grid by penalties for other drivers and made the most of the opportunity, running as high as 13th place before the first round of pit stops. After that it was back to the back once more, but well ahead of Mazepin (he was over a minute and a half in front by the chequered flag) and he was able to shadow Nicholas Latifi for the rest of the afternoon, even briefly featuring in the battle of the lead when he held up Max Verstappen just long enough to give Lewis Hamilton a chance of catching the Red Bull in the closing laps. "I enjoyed it. Overall, we expected worse so we're happy with what we managed to do with the package we had. I had some tight battles, especially at the start, and we were right in the mix."
Nicholas Latifi (P15): 5.5/10
That brief burst of impressive form that Williams enjoyed just a few short weeks ago seems to have dissipated as quickly as it arose. While they've not sunk back to their dismal days of old - they have Haas around to take care of the ignominy of handling the wooden spoon - it's still sad to see them taking two giant steps backwards in recent races. Half a second behind his team mate on Friday, Latifi never looked like getting through to the second round of qualifying on Saturday afternoon and after penalties were applied he duly lined up in 14th place on the grid on Sunday, only to be involved in a first corner fracas that dropped him to the back with damage to the car. "One of the Haas cars made a lunge up the inside, and I could tell I was going to become sandwiched," he explained. "I picked up some front-wing damage and that meant I had to pit much earlier than we wanted to, so our second and third stints were then much longer than ideal." Latifi had the satisfaction of finishing ahead of both Haas cars but that was about the most he could salvage from the situation.
