Zhou Guanyu (P16): 6.5/10
Zhou Guanyu was just three hundredths of a second behind his Alfa Romeo team mate Valtteri Bottas in the second round of qualifying, having been quicker than the Finn in all three practice sessions. Unfortunately the race did not go nearly as well for the Chinese sophomore, a bad start leaving him trapped in a DRS train and then a Virtual Safety Car coming at just the wrong time giving his Haas and Williams rivals a crucial new tyre advantage in the closing laps. That saw him tumble down the timing screens and he finished a rather harsh 16th at the chequered flag. Bottas' top ten finish shows that the C43 can and should do better than Zhou managed on Sunday, but credit to him for setting the fastest lap of the race even though he didn't get the bonus point as he was outside the top ten at the finish.
Nico Hulkenberg (P15): 6/10
There was jubilation at Haas when Nico Hulkenberg made it through to the final round of qualifying on Saturday, a strong performance in his first race back as a full-time driver (not including four short-notice stand-in appearances) since the end of 2019. It's nice to have the Hulk back, but it would have been even better if his race hadn't been quite as scrappy as this. He ended up exceeding track limits so many times that he ended up with a 15 second aggregate penalty (which is a match to Esteban Ocon's own penalty-fest). In mitigation, his front wing flag was broken in a first lap collision with an Alpine, requiring a replacement at the pit stop which dropped him out of realistic contention for the rest of the evening as the VF-23 increasingly struggled with tyre degradation.
