Lando Norris (P10, 1 pt): 7/10
Like his McLaren team mate Daniel Ricciardo, Lando Norris only had a few laps running in the wet conditions of Friday for fear of damaging their limited supplies of new components, and also in the belief that the race was likely to be mainly dry. He got to work on Saturday and was eighth after running 26 laps. That set him up nicely to make the final round of qualifying, but a near-miss with Max Verstappen put him off balance and left him starting from P10, just one stop ahead of Ricciardo. He went backwards at the start of the race and dropped to P13, but an early change to intermediates proved the right call and he emerged from the cycle of pit stops in P9, until George Russell passed him on lap 15 as the Mercedes recovered from a poor stop. Norris' unsuccessful struggle to pass Nicholas Latifi in the final nine laps showed just how much straight line speed the MCL36 lacked in Suzuka this weekend.
Nicholas Latifi (P9, 2 pts): 8/10
Having been critical of Nicholas Latifi's decline in form throughout the season, it's time to give credit where it's due: this was a fantastic showing from the Canadian driver, in which he didn't put a single foot wrong despite some very tricky race conditions. Earlier there had been a little flicker of promise when he finished P12 (ahead of Williams team mate Alex Albon) in the wet second practice session, but finishing bottom in qualifying looked like it was back to normal in the dry. Latifi did pick up four places at the start before the safety car, but lost them after the restart and was soon back to the back. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. And then he and Sebastian Vettel were the first to pit for inters on lap 5 and it was a stroke of genius that put him into the top ten. It could still have gone very wrong from there, but Latifi showed some serious skill to keep all four tyres on the wet asphalt and secure his best result since an even wetter and shorter outing in Belgium in 2021.
