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This weekend saw a brand new format for sprint race weekends, but when it came down to it there was still a fulfilling full-length Grand Prix feast on Sunday. Red Bull might have run away with the race at the front, but there were plenty of scraps down the order - with some drivers having a bit of a nightmare!
Nyck de Vries (SP14, Accident - Lap 10): 3/10
We really hate to kick a man when he's down, and normally we'd be more gentle with a rookie, but Nyck de Vries is no ordinary rookie - he's a former Formula E world champion, after all - and the truth is that he had an utterly dismal weekend in Baku. Strangely enough it started quite decently in practice where he was sixth fastest, but after that he looked like an accident looking for somewhere to happen. He crashed in qualifying before he could set a proper time, and was slowest in the sprint showdown on Saturday morning. He managed to last the distance in the sprint race and made up a few places to finish in 14th despite clashing with his AlphaTauri team mate Yuki Tsunoda, but then clipped the wall ten laps into the Grand Prix to bring out a safety car that indirectly cost compatriot Max Verstappen his shot at victory. It was his second retirement in as many races, and sadly de Vries - so memorable as a late stand-in at last year's Italian GP - is already looking horribly out of his depth in F1.
Zhou Guanyu (SP12, Retired - Lap 37): 5/10
It was not a good weekend for Alfa Romeo as a whole, which seemed to have absolutely nothing in the locker and just trudged around the streets of Baku looking out-matched by every other team out there. Even Zhou Guanyu struggled to find any personal saving points: while he was quicker than his team mate Valtteri Bottas in practice and was ahead of the Finn in the sprint showdown, he was slower in the main qualifying session where he failed to make the first cut at the end of Q1. He did manage to improve to P12 in the short sprint on Saturday afternoon, but his efforts to do something similar on Sunday saw him overtaken by Pierre Gasly at the start of the race. He then got stuck in a long DRS train with few opportunities to make a break for it, before his day ended prematurely in technical failure while running back where he'd started - in 16th place.
