Pierre Gasly (P8, 4 pts): 8/10
Pierre Gasly will be happy to finish the Miami GP ahead of his Alpine team mate Esteban Ocon, with both of them in the points after frustrating outings in Melbourne and Baku. The two drivers were looking in much better form this weekend than they had been, with Gasly putting in a sparkling first practice performance in P6. He proved it was no fluke by doing the same in FP3 although the shine was taken off it by the way he was pipped by Ocon - albeit by a mere couple of hundredths of a second. The spring was back in Gasly's step after qualifying which saw him snatch fifth place on the grid, three spots ahead of his frenemy. He got ahead of Kevin Magnussen at the start and ran in the top four until Max Verstappen blasted his way past after eight laps, George Russell taking advantage of the distraction to follow the Red Bull through and drop Gasly to sixth. Pitting on lap 15 dropped the French driver to 14th and after that it was all about biding his time as those who had started on the hard tyres made later pit stops, and Gasly hunted any opportunities to improve his position - such as passing Zhou Guanyu on lap 22 and Lance Stroll on lap 25. With six laps to go he was running in P6 but lost out to a double move by Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton and ended up having to settle for eighth at the line. After Alpine's recent headaches, he'll still be pretty pleased with that.
Charles Leclerc (P7, 6 pts): 6.5/10
Another disappointing and frustrating weekend for Charles Leclerc. Crashing twice in the same place in practice and qualifying was a particularly low point for the Monegasque this year, and he's starting to get a worrying reputation of being fast but accident prone: he's either on pole or in the wall. And although he was in the top three throughout practice, he never looked likely to be on pole this weekend. The red flag triggered by his second accident left him in seventh place on the grid for Sunday. The silver lining was that this was two places ahead of Max Verstappen; but the Red Bull's awesome pace meant that it nonetheless sailed past the Ferrari after just four laps. Leclerc had nothing to match it and indeed was struggling even to fend off what are traditionally referred to as the midfield cars. Having started on medium tyres he pitted on lap 17 dropping him to 15th, and after that it was hard work to dig himself out and back into the points by the time the chequered flag was out. It was almost a surprise to see him as high up as P7 at that point. He'd certainly worked for the points, but there was nothing in Sunday's performance that would have muted the alarm bells starting to toll in Maranello.
