Nyck de Vries (P14): 5.5/10
There's a lot expected from Nyck de Vries this year. While he's technically a rookie, he's also a former world champion (in Formula E) and has already made his F1 debut and earned his first points last year at Monza substituting for an unwell Alex Albon. But his Bahrain weekend went in the wrong direction (P16, P19, P20 respectively in practice) and he missed the first cut in qualifying. That left him on the back row, fatally wounding his race prospects on Sunday where he was, if we're perfectly honest, rather anonymous throughout. He was still positive about his first outing for AlphaTauri: "I'm pretty satisfied with our race today. Obviously, it could have been better and there is room for improvement, but in terms of performance, our race pace was decent," he said. "We could still fight some cars around us." Fight yes; but beat, not so much.
Kevin Magnussen (P13): 6/10
Kevin Magnussen started the weekend in the top ten but thereafter struggled, missing the cut in qualifying and which put him P17 on the grid where he alone opted to start on a set of hard tyres while everyone else was on the soft compound. Unsurprisingly he was soon dead last. Even when those on soft tyres started to struggle, he was pinned in place. Penalty problems for Esteban Ocon and Nico Hulkenberg and pneumatic issues for Lance Norris helped him up to 15th, and a late Virtual Safety Car allowed him a free late pit pit stop to take on new tyres with which to make a move on Nyck de Vries, but in the end 13th place was a long way from the points. It's not the sort of start to the season that Haas would have been hoping for after a sprightly time in pre-season testing.
