Lando Norris (P8, 4 pts): 7/10
"Too many mistakes" was the frequent comment from McLaren's Lando Norris this weekend, although he was far from alone in this respect and it's another example of how the young Briton tends to be overly hard on himself. Hard, but in this case also not entirely incorrect. He finished Friday second quickest behind Sergio Perez and ahead of both Mercedes cars, but there seemed little expectation that this sort of form would carry through into the rest of the weekend and sure enough he dropped behind his team mate Daniel Ricciardo in qualifying. A penalty for Valtteri Bottas saw Norris start from seventh on the grid and he opted for an early stop on lap 10, but he remained stubbornly stuck behind his former team mate Carlos Sainz during the middle stint. Bottas finally broke through on lap 35 and Norris made no further impression on the day as he ran without incident or opportunity to the finish in eighth place, meaning he drops a place and one point behind Sergio Perez in the drivers championship. "We struggled quite a bit with pace compared to the Ferraris, who were strong today. I also think there were some areas I could've done better, including defending on some moves," he commented. "We just weren't able to stay ahead of the Ferraris in front, so not a great day today."
Carlos Sainz (P7, 6 pts): 7.5/10
For once, Carlos Sainz looked like the number two driver at Ferrari this weekend. He was lagging behind Charles Leclerc in both of Friday's practice sessions, and although he shone in FP3 when he was runner-up on the time sheets behind Sergio Perez he was back behind Leclerc by a couple of tenths in the afternoon. A miscue in the final round of qualifying meant he would have to start the race on the soft compound - the only other driver in the top ten to do so was Yuki Tsunoda. It left him struggling to hold back the McLarens of Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris on the first lap, and he gave Ricciardo a free pass when told his defence had been borderline in terms of track limits when in fact it had been Norris he had been vying with. As a result of that mix-up he ran the short first stint and longer second stage pinned in fifth place between the McLarens. The final part of the race came down to trying to stop Valtteri Bottas getting past as the Finn sought to recover from his five place grid penalty, but ultimately the Ferrari didn't have the pace needed to do that. With two laps to go Sainz was finally ousted and had to settle for seventh at the chequered flag. "A frustrating race for me because we had the pace to finish P5 but things didn't go our way."
