Valtteri Bottas (P8, 4 pts): 7.5/10
A slightly awkward weekend for Valtteri Bottas, who trailed his Alfa Romeo team mate Zhou Guanyu throughout practice, but then pipped the Chinese driver in qualifying to start just ahead of him on the grid from 12th place after both missed out on the final top ten shoot-out round. Bottas got a great start to the race and jumped ahead of Lance Stroll, Lando Norris, Esteban Ocon and Nico Hulkenberg on the first lap alone. While Stroll soon got back in front, Bottas spent the rest of the evening in a pretty consistent ninth place, which was promoted to eighth by Charles Leclerc's late retirement. There were no spectacular fireworks along the way, just good, solid race craft and keeping out of trouble to make the best use of the situation he found himself. "I don't think we could have done better today," he said, perfectly accurately with his usual Scandinavian understatement.
George Russell (P7, 6 pts): 7/10
It was a roller coaster ride for Mercedes this weekend. At the end of Friday it looked like we should be keeping everyone in the team away from sharp implements; on Saturday night after a better than expected qualifying, George Russell was contemplating a podium. But by the chequered flag on Sunday, team boss Toto Wolff was talking about it being their worst race ever. It certainly wasn't the greatest performance from Russell, who forced his way past Fernando Alonso at the start having been passed by his team mate Lewis Hamilton off the line, only to lose out to the Aston Martin when his tyres started to lose grip on lap 13. He was subsequently undercut by Alonso's team mate Lance Stroll when his pit stop was delayed in favour of Hamilton (who had first call as the leading Mercedes) and after that he was stuck in eighth until Charles Leclerc's retirement promoted him back to P7 where he remained to the end. By Russell's standards, something of a 'meh' performance: not the best of times, not the worst of times. And unfortunately, somewhat lacking any great expectations going forward.
