Sergio Perez (P4, 12 pts): 7.5/10
On the face of it, fourth place is a decent result for Sergio Perez. And yet for some reason, the Mexican driver looked off-colour for much of the weekend compared with his successes earlier in the season. Sixth fastest in FP1 and tenth in FP2 are the sort of performances you used to see from Perez last season before he properly got to grips with the Red Bull. He himself conceded he was "nowhere". Even when he was fifth in final practice, it was still a full second off Max Verstappen's time. But he nonetheless delivered when it came to qualifying, taking third place on the grid which meant he was ideally placed to help Verstappen on Sunday, with Charles Leclerc alone and vulnerable having no team mate on hand to support him when the lights went out. Unfortunately Perez was effectively removed from that battle when he was ambushed by Lewis Hamilton going into the first corner, and came perilously close to losing another place to George Russell as well. Perez spent the first half of the race stuck between the two Mercedes, and then Carlos Sainz came roaring up and demonstrated the superior pace of the Ferrari at Paul Ricard. Russell almost succeeded in taking advantage of the moment to follow Sainz past Perez but the Red Bull fought back with everything at his disposal and Russell had to relent. That looked like being the end of it, until the confused messages about the end of a Virtual Safety Car with four laps to go caught Perez out. It gave Russell the opportunity he needed to pounce and snatch that podium position for himself. Perez was - quite understandably - decidedly unamused by this whole development and by Russell's loose interpretation of track limits in the final minutes.
George Russell (P3, 15 pts): 8.5/10
George Russell has been earning the name Mr Consistency since his move to Mercedes - mainly thanks to finishing in the top five in all the races he's completed (Silverstone's first lap retirement being the exception) and now with four podiums to his credit. But the consistency also manifests in a different way; Russell decides on his set-up quickly, and sticks with it rather than fussing around trying to find fractional improvements like his team mate Lewis Hamilton is wont to. It might mean he misses out on a few tenths of overall performance, but it's a tactic that obviously works for him. Even in France, with a second significant package of upgrades for the W13 coming on stream, he quickly put an end to the experimentation and worked with what he had in front of him. Fourth fastest in both of Friday's practice sessions, he slipped to sixth in both FP3 and qualifying, but the third row was still a good platform from which to launch his race on Sunday. He immediately dispatched Lando Norris although was himself overtaken by Fernando Alonso, but he soon took care of that injustice on lap 3. After that it looked like he would be stuck behind Sergio Perez all the way to the finish, and to be honest fourth place would still have been a decent result. Carlos Sainz' arrival on the scene mixed things up and Russell almost followed the Ferrari past Perez on lap 41 before being rebuffed in no uncertain terms (and Russell wasn't happy about it, nor by the way Perez came back on track after overshooting the chicane to do so). When the stewards failed to agree that looked like the end of it, but a comms mix up over the ending of a late Virtual Safety Car caught Perez out and gave Russell the opening he needed. This time, it was the Briton who was lucky to escape the attention of the stewards for being a bit fast and loose with track limits, but the reward was the first time the two Mercedes men have shared a podium since Russell's arrival at Brackley at the start of 2022.
