Carlos Sainz (P4, 12 pts): 7.5/10
Carlos Sainz continues to struggle to get the best out of this year's Ferrari. While fourth place might look like a good day at the proverbial office, it hides another scrappy weekend. The Spaniard would doubtless have wanted better at his home race, and it's not hard to see how he could realistically have come away from Barcelona with a maiden win for Ferrari in his pocket in different circumstances. He was 0.079s behind his team mate Charles Leclerc in first practice, but then Ferrari had to build a new chassis for him overnight after detecting a fuel issue in the F1-75. Even if that only cost him a tenth in terms of speed on Saturday, it would have been a crucial difference to qualifying between making it onto the front row and starting from P3 as he did. A poor launch cost him two spots on Sunday and then a spin at turn 4 on lap 7 spurred by a gust of tail wind (prefiguring Max Verstappen's own mishap moments later) dropped him out of the top ten altogether. An early pit stop on lap 10 helped steady the ship and after that Sainz just put his head down and kept plugging away, and he was soon back up to P5 running behind Valtteri Bottas. he finally got passed the Alfa Romeo on lap 58 only to succumb to the charging Lewis Hamilton moments later. But the Mercedes then had to start lifting and coasting for the final three laps because of a water leak, and despite being given a similar warning himself by the Ferrari pit wall Sainz nonetheless kept his foot down and successfully snatched fourth place back in time for the finish.
George Russell (P3, 15 pts): 9.5/10
There's been a lot of talk about whether George Russell is proving to be the better driver this season than his illustrious team mate, seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton. Both have been struggling with the manifest problems of the W13, but it's been Russell and his experience at Williams of wringing every last drop of performance from a recalcitrant package that's looked more suitable to the task at hand. This weekend saw the team bring its first major set of upgrades to the car, which by all accounts have made a real difference, and once again it was Russell who extracted the most from it. He was faster than Hamilton in all three practice sessions (and second overall in FP2) and then beat Lewis again in qualifying to start from P4. A poor start for Carlos Sainz put Russell into immediate podium contention. He then had the perfect seat in the house to see Verstappen spin out of second place on lap 9, and then to watch Charles Leclerc's Ferrari expire on lap 27 handing him the lead of the race. Verstappen's intermittent DRS issue gave Russell a fighting chance of holding on, and fight is just what he did for all he was worth. His defence impressed everyone - even Verstappen - but ultimately the faster Red Bulls had their way and Russell had to turn his attention to managing the overheating issues that threatened his podium. "It was very difficult last few laps, a real survival race," he said. But of course, he pulled it off.
