Esteban Ocon (P8, 4 pts): 7.5/10
The Alpine took a while to find its form this weekend, but crucially did so in time for the race which helped Esteban Ocon deliver a significant eighth place in his home Grand Prix. Before then it had been more of a struggle, finishing first practice in P13 (ahead of team mate Fernando Alonso) and down to P18 in FP2 (now four tenths behind the Spaniard). He was well off the pace in final practice but still hoped for a positive result in qualifying - only to end up in 12th place. "We didn't quite find that sweet spot with the car," he said afterwards. Grid penalties for Carlos Sainz and Kevin Magnussen meant he nonetheless started Sunday's race from tenth place on the grid and then gained a place when Yuki Tsunoda spun out. He passed Daniel Ricciardo on lap 7 only to end up getting shuffled back behind the McLaren during the pit stops that took place under the safety car for Charles Leclerc's accident. It took him 25 laps after the restart to finally get the better of Ricciardo for a second time, after which he settled in and held position for the final nine laps to pick up four valuable points to help boost Alpine ahead of McLaren in the constructors standings.
Lando Norris (P7, 6 pts): 7/10
Lando Norris finished ahead of his team mate in all three practice sessions at Circuit Paul Ricard, no meant feat against a driver of Daniel Ricciardo's talent and stature. Especially when the Australian had the benefit of McLaren's latest upgrades right from the start of first practice while Norris has to wait until FP2 before getting all the new bits bolted on, which left him feeling in his own words as through he was playing 'catch-up' from that point on. In the circumstances he wasn't expecting much from qualifying, and to not only make it through to the final top ten pole shoot-out round but to take fifth place between the two Mercedes drivers was quite the coup. He wasn't able to pull off the same success in the race, losing two places on the first lap as he fell prey to Fernando Alonso and George Russell, but he didn't panic and got his head down to run in seventh place ahead of Ricciardo for almost the entire afternoon, both of them stuck in the DRS train of cars running behind Alonso who seemed to go into engine-saving mode the first minute he could. Actually it probably suited Norris just fine in the circumstances, and anything higher than P7 would have been overly ambitious this weekend.
