Yuki Tsunoda (P10, 1 pt): 7/10
With his AlphaTauri team mate having a dire weekend on the other side of the garage, Yuki Tsunoda was able to get his head down and put in a solid performance in Baku and emerge with a welcome extra championship point to add to the one he picked up in the messy finish at Melbourne. It was an encouraging sign for the team to see Tsunoda make it through to the top ten pole shoot-out round in qualifying, but in the sprint showdown he was caught out by a red flag for an accident involving Logan Sargeant. It left him stuck in 18th place for the afternoon sprint, during which he made contact with the wall which encouraged his tyre to break out and go solo. The team apparently failed to recognised a badly damaged AT04 when it was in front of them and tried to get him back out again; race control viewed that error of judgement rather dimly. The main race saw Tsunoda lose positions at the start and get lodged in 12th amid a long DRS train of cars, but he bided his time knowing that two of those ahead of him - Esteban Ocon and Nico Hulkenberg - still had a mandatory pit stop to make. He calmly waited it out and was duly rewarded with tenth at the line.
Lando Norris (SP17, P9, 2 pts): 7.5/10
Despite picking up a double points finish last time out in the unusual finish to the Australian Grand Prix, McLaren are still struggling to recover from development set-backs over the winter. In the circumstances, Lando Norris did really well to finish fifth fastest in practice and then make it through to the final top ten qualifying round in the afternoon. He did so by using every last set of softs leaving him without new ones for Saturday's sprint showdown as required by the rules, so although he made it through to SQ3 he was obliged to sit the session out and start in P10. In fact, McLaren seemed to use the sprint as something of a test day, sending Norris out on a used of softs which only showed that the compound wasn't up to the rigours of the job and to be avoided like the plague on Sunday. Norris ended up dropping to P11 behind Esteban Ocon and Nico Hulkenberg after his first pit stop but he knew the others would have to stop eventually, and so he simply waited them out to pick up ninth and a couple of championship points.
