Pierre Gasly (SP13, P14): 4.5/10
Pierre Gasly suffered similar problems to his Alpine team mate Esteban Ocon over the weekend, but then added his own layer of disasters on top for good measure. The Friday was little short of catastrophic, when his car went up in flames at the end of practice in what the team passed off as a hydraulics issue. The mechanics scrambled to get the A523 ready in time for qualifying and just about managed it - only for Gasly to crash on his first flying lap. His sprint showdown ended prematurely with a suspected exhaust leak - doubtless from all the knocks and hurried work on the car over the last 24 hours - but the sprint itself was better and he finished in 13th place. After all that drama, Sunday's Grand Prix was relatively peaceful and uneventful, but - despite an out-of-sequence pit stop on lap 23 - Gasly ended up stuck in a long train of cars and was unable to make progress throughout the afternoon, crossing the line in 14th place having never looked like troubling the top ten or picking up any points.
Kevin Magnussen (SP11, P13): 5/10
After his triumphant return to Formula 1 in 2022 as a late substitute for Nikita Mazepin at Haas, Kevin Magnussen has been strangely off the boil so far this season. Things looked little better for him in Baku, where the best you could say about the Dane is that he was again somewhat tepid. Slowest of anyone with limited running in the sole practice session, he missed the cut at the end of the first round of qualifying and finished up 16th on the grid for the Grand Prix. He did slightly better in the shootout and made up places in the sprint to cross the line in a respectable 11th, but that was still several places away from the points on Saturday. In the main event, he made his pit stop just as race control were deciding whether to scramble a safety car for Nyck de Vries' accident. As a result he lost out and fell to 17th at the end of a long line of logjammed cars all getting DRS from the one in front and hence none of them able to gain a workable advantage to make any progress. He was able to pass Zhou Guanyu on lap 19, and picked up another place when Pierre Gasly pitted on lap 23, but thereafter maintained position behind Alex ALbon before late stops for Nico Hulkenberg and Esteban Ocon promoted him to a somewhat flattering 13th.
