Lance Stroll (P10, 1 pt): 7/10
The signs weren't good for Lance Stroll on Friday and Saturday. He started off in P12 in first practice, sank to 15th in FP2, and then bottomed out in 18th in final practice. Despite all the signs he clearly expected to make it through to the second round of qualifying, if not all the way through to Q3, and seemed perplexed when he missed the first cut instead. He blamed traffic on his out-lap and at the end of his push lap for the failure to thrive, which left him starting Sunday's race from an awkward 15th place on the grid where it's too easy to get caught up in other people's accidents. Instead, he enjoyed a brilliant first lap in the race and vaulted into P10 ahead of his Aston Martin team mate Sebastian Vettel, and even came close to claiming the scalp of Esteban Ocon for good measure. But that was pretty much the full story of his race, as he spent virtually the entire afternoon after that running in tenth, save for six laps leading up to the safety car. The restart found him running between Ocon and Alex Albon for the entire middle section of the race. Vettel finally took care of Albon to take up station behind him, but Stroll made no impression on Ocon ahead who went on to overtake Daniel Ricciardo on lap 45. Stroll felt that he had a chance of taking on the McLaren but was thwarted by the brief Virtual Safety Car for Zhou Guanyu's exit, so he had to settle for a solitary championship point for tenth place.
Daniel Ricciardo (P9, 2 pts): 7/10
You couldn't exactly call the French Grand Prix a return to form for Daniel Ricciardo, but he was very much up to the same general level of his McLaren team mate Lando Norris as the pair worked to introduce a number of new upgrades to the MCL36. It left them slightly off balance on Friday but then started to work to their benefit on Saturday, although in qualifying Ricciardo missed the cut to make it into the final top ten pole shoot-out round while Norris found a way to sail through and finish in an unexpectedly strong P5. Ricciardo still started in the top ten thanks to the grid penalties for Carlos Sainz and Kevin Magnussen, and he gained a position on the first lap when Yuki Tsunoda spun out while Norris lost out to Fernando Alonso and George Russell. That left the McLarens flying in formation in seventh and eighth respectively. Ricciardo was demoted by Esteban Ocon on lap 7 but the safety car for Charles Leclerc's crash reunited the papaya pair back in their former positions. Ricciardo did his best to hold off the recovering Sainz, only to lose out to Ocon again on lap 45. It was a significant pass, as it means Alpine moves four points ahead of McLaren in the constructors championship in their knife-edge battle for fourth place in the team standings.
