Carlos Sainz (P4, 12 pts): 7.5/10
Friday wasn't the best of starts for Ferrari, and Carlos Sainz ended first practice dead last after going for a high speed spin that shredded his tyres. Ferrari continued to try all sorts of set-up tests in FP2 and it wasn't until Saturday morning that Sainz finally climbed into the top ten in time for qualifying, which saw him end up in fourth place where he joined team mate Charles Leclerc on the second row of the grid for Sunday's start. While Leclerc was dicing for position with Sergio Perez ahead of him, Sainz had a relatively quiet first half of the Grand Prix and it wasn't until Fernando Alonso's Aston Martin started looming large in his mirrors that the pressure was on. He was unable to do anything about Alonso, but he did regroup in time to hold fast when Lewis Hamilton tried to force his way through. His 13-lap defence of fourth place was impressive, although he still won't be happy to have just missed out on the podium.
Fernando Alonso (P3, 15 pts): 10/10
So much of the chatter heading into the Bahrain GP was about Aston Martin, and whether the impressive pace shown in pre-season testing was a real thing or a desert mirage. Most people decided that it was some sort of trick caused by low fuel loads or by rival teams 'sandbagging'. They expected Aston to drop away when it got to the race weekend and things got serious, because teams from the back simply don't make up that sort of ground on the leading squads over a single off-season - even if they've recruited one of the top F1 talents of the last two decades. Most people were therefore dumbfounded when Alonso finished Friday practice on top. They were reassured by the Spaniard 'only' qualifying in fifth (ahead of both Mercedes) since at least that meant he had little chance to claim a podium. That was even clearer when Alonso lost out to Lewis Hamilton and George Russell at the start, and got rear-ended by his team mate Lance Stroll. But he survived, and duly caught and dispatched first Russell and then Hamilton, in a thrilling battle that would have been the highlight of the race if not for the even better duel he had a few minutes later with Carlos Sainz to secure himself a spot on the podium after all. In so many ways, this was a ten out of ten performance if ever there was one, not to mention one of the most popular.
