Carlos Sainz (P4, 12 pts): 8.5/10
On balance you'd have to say that Carlos Sainz looked the stronger of the two Ferrari drivers. Quickest in first practice, he was a couple of tenths behind his team mate in FP2 after going the wrong way with his set-up choices, but that was soon undone on Saturday and he looked on course to beat Charles Leclerc to pole position - until George Russell came out of nowhere to surprise everybody (not least himself) by taking a maiden pole position. Sainz knew he'd have a good chance to take the lead from the Mercedes man at the start of the race, but Russell proved to be a tougher nut to crack than expected and repelled all advances. Sainz took the lead briefly on lap 16 when Russell pitted, but was then called in himself in what seemed like a bid by the Ferrari pit wall to engineer a switch in position with Leclerc without resorting to the blunt instrument of team orders. Sainz put in a longer second stint than Russell and Leclerc and led again from lap 40. He made his own final call to pit lane on lap 47 for a set of softs which needed careful management to get to the finish meaning that his focus was now holding on to a podium position. That wasn't to be, and Lewis Hamilton's late burst of sudden speed relegated Sainz to fourth place at the finish, with both Ferrari drivers left scratching their heads wondering just how this one had got away from them so quickly.
George Russell (Pole, P3, 15 pts): 9/10
It didn't seem possible that Mercedes would go for a full season without taking pole position at some point, but we hadn't been expecting George Russell to be the one to pull it off and secured his maiden pole. It certainly looked highly unlikely after Friday's miserable performance for the team, Russell slipping from fifth to eighth by the end of second practice and Lewis Hamilton not even finishing in the top ten. The pair started qualifying with a surprise one-two, but surely that was a fluke? Hamilton's hopes of contending for pole died at the hands of a DRS failure, leaving Russell the last man on track with a chance of interfering with an all-Ferrari front row. And somehow he did it, clinching the top spot by 0.044s (we wonder if that number would have brought a ghost of a smile to Hamilton when he noticed?) Alone at the front with Hamilton down in seventh, Russell looked like he would be a sitting duck for the Ferraris to quickly pick off at the start of the race, but he put in a commendable defence in the opening laps on soft tyres. Even after the pit stops it took a brilliant move by Leclerc on lap 31 to finally displace the Briton from the lead. Russell suffered with tyre performance in the latter half of the race, but with the Ferrari pair once again tripping up it was Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton who took advantage in the closing laps. Russell dug deep to stay out of range of Carlos Sainz and secure himself his fifth podium of the season, and his second in a row after also sharing the podium with Verstappen and Hamilton in France.
