Kevin Magnussen (P16): 5/10
Haas enjoyed a brief spurt in performance before the summer break, but that seems to be a long distant dream these days. In practice Kevin Magnussen was P17, P16 and P18 in the three sessions respectively, and in qualifying he and his team mate Mick Schumacher ended up bottom of the pile. Both cars had 15 place grid penalties from taking new engine components, but these were trumped by even more severe 'back of the grid' penalties for Carlos Sainz, Lewis Hamilton and Yuki Tsunoda meaning Magnussen started ahead of Schumacher in P16. Magnussen got a great start and was up to P12 at the end of the first lap but after than quickly went into reverse. Following a long 24-lap first stint he emerged from his pit stop at the bottom of the order having incurred a five second penalty for gaining an advantage by leaving the track. It sealed his fate and as a result he was classified in last place of the 16 cars that made it to the finish on Sunday.
Nicholas Latifi (P15): 3/10
Let's be honest: this was a catastrophic, worst case scenario for Nicholas Latifi. Being comprehensively upstaged by a rookie team mate finishing in the points while he himself finished last-but-one must surely be the final nail in the Canadian's Formula 1 coffin, unless his sponsors' pockets are even more impressively deep than we realised. Nyck de Vries came in to FP3 with less than an hour's notice, and he was still within a tenth of Latifi's time. In qualifying, de Vries narrowly made the cut at the end of Q1 despite having his fastest lap deleted, while Latifi was eliminated. Latifi started right behind de Vries on Sunday but immediately dropped four places when the lights went out and then sank irrevocably to the bottom of the order, even as de Vries continued to run in the top ten. There can be no excuse for such a poor showing between drivers in the same hardware, except to put it down to pure ability. De Vries has it; Latifi doesn't.
