Pierre Gasly (P12): 6/10
Worrying times for AlphaTauri, which has now sunk to eighth place in the constructors championship with Gasly himself languishing P13 in the drivers standings. And he really didn't look like he had much pep to him despite this being his home Grand Prix where he received the enthusiastic support of passionate French fans at every turn. Armed with the latest upgrades to the AT03, he'd been in the top ten in both of Friday's practice sessions, so P13 in FP3 seemed an aberration. Instead it was a worrying portent of qualifying where he failed to make the first cut by just 0.016s - "we just weren't fast enough, and at the moment I don't know why. I was doing clean laps, but the car was sliding a lot in all the slow-speed corners". Grid penalties for Carlos Sainz and Kevin Magnussen meant he actually took the start in 14th, only to lose a spot to Mick Schumacher on the first lap and subsequently brushed aside by Sainz who was on the comeback trial. By the time the safety car came out for Charles Leclerc's retirement he was running behind Alex Albon, but an attempt to pass the Williams on lap 28 saw him overshoot the chicane and lose three places to Sebastian Vettel, Valtteri Bottas and Kevin Magnussen. The rest of the race saw him trying to undo that damage, and while he did finally dispatch Albon on lap 47 he remained behind Vettel all the way to the chequered flag.
Sebastian Vettel (P11): 6.5/10
Sebastian Vettel won't have liked finishing just behind his Aston Martin team mate Lance Stroll this weekend - he certainly put a lot of effort into overhauling the Canadian at the end of the race - but it was a fair reflection of the relative form of the pair at Circuit Paul Ricard. Vettel was narrowly behind Stroll in FP1, ahead in FP2, and then lost out on a significant amount of track time in final practice where he was slowest of anyone due to damage to the AMR22. Even so he bounced back in qualifying and made it through to the second round while Stroll missed the cut. However when it came to the race, Vettel then got bogged down in midfield traffic while Stroll cut through the fallout of Yuki Tsunoda's spin to gain five places on the first lap and move ahead of Vettel into P10. The four time world champion then spent the rest of the race behind his team mate: pitting under the safety car for Charles Leclerc's retirement saw them separated by Alex Albon and Pierre Gasly for a spell, but Gasly made a mistake on lap 28 and Albon was dispensed with on lap 39 leaving Vettel once again right behind Stroll for the final 16 laps but unable to find a way past by the time they reached the finish line.
