Nyck de Vries (P14): 6/10
This week's 'best of the rookies' title goes to Nyck de Vries, but in all honesty it did little to lift the spirits at AlphaTauri which seems in a really troubled state at the moment, with team principal Franz Tost publicly proclaiming that he no longer trusts his own engineers when they talk about the AT04. De Vries finished Friday practice in P17 and then missed out on the final session while the team undertook a power unit change, so it's no surprise that he missed the cut at the end of Q1 and lined up in P18 on the grid on Sunday evening. He gained a little from being able to leave his pit stop until the safety car for Lance Stroll's retirement, after which he spent some time in 15th place before gaining a position later on with a pass on Logan Sargeant on lap 40. Not a great deal to write home about really, but it's another full race distance under his belt with no major mishaps, so it's all been a good learning experience.
Zhou Guanyu (P13): 7/10
We're a long way from the days when people scoffed at Zhou Guanyu as a pay driver, and he was indisputably ahead of his Alfa Romeo team mate Valtteri Bottas in Saudi Arabia in all but first practice where just 0.016s separated them in the bottom three. Both of them made it through to the second round of qualifying (which if we're honest was a bit of a surprise given their form up to then) with Zhou ending up three spots ahead of Bottas in 11th place on the grid on Sunday. Both Alfas opted for early pit stops which meant they lost out when the safety car was scrambled shortly afterwards. They took the opportunity to pit again anyway to revert to the mediums having earlier switched to the hard compound. While Bottas sank to the back with damage, Zhou managed to level out in 14th place and subsequently gained a further spot with a pass on Logan Sargeant. But at no time did he realistically look on course to break into the points in Jeddah.
