Fernando Alonso (P2, 18 pts): 9/10
It's Fernando Alonso's best result of the season, extending his unbroken run of top four finishes since the first race with Aston Martin in Bahrain. But without wishing to downplay another remarkable achievement for the veteran campaigner, it doesn't actually represent a significant step forward from those previous outings. If Sergio Perez hadn't written himself out of contention on Saturday then the chances are that Alonso would have ended up crossing the line in third place again, having proved agonisingly short of snatching pole position in qualifying. As it was, he gamely tried to hang on when the lights went out but Max Verstappen soon started to pull away into the distance. There's just no matching the Red Bull pace at the moment, and so it was soon apparent that the result was out of Alonso's hands and only some sort of incident, breakdown or accident could change the outcome. Alonso was also pretty sure that Esteban Ocon in the Alpine behind didn't have the pace to threaten him at any point. There would have been understandable anxiety when the rain started to fall, but Alonso has seen all this before many times in the past and would have known what to do - which is why the team's decision to go against his advice to move straight to inters and give him a set of mediums was such an odd mistake for the Aston Martin pit wall to make. They really should listen to someone who knows, who has been there and lived it. Not that it really mattered: Alonso had long since come to the conclusion that there was no catching Max, and opted to simply hold on and enjoy a calm run to second - and an unexpected reunion with last year's team mate Ocon, bridges apparently having been mended in the meantime, if the hugs between them are as sincere as they seemed.
Max Verstappen (Pole, P1, 25 pts): 9.5/10
Another near-perfect weekend for Max Verstappen, and we're leaning pretty heavily on the 'near' when it comes to denying him a perfect ten out of ten. How can we justify snipping off that final half point? He did have a poor start in first practice and seemed to be genuinely struggling to bring the Red Bull to heel as he finished sixth fastest and nine tenths off Carlos Sainz. But we've seen him do this thing before - it's almost like he spends FP1 teasing his rivals and dangling the chance of a prize in front of them that he knows they have no actual chance of winning when it comes down to the wire, because from then on he was imperious. But at the same time it wasn't a total walk in the park for Verstappen, who really had to push hard and clip quite a few barriers both in qualifying and in the race itself to ensure he marched away with victory over wily old campaigner Fernando Alonso. In the olden days, the more brittle Formula 1 cars would have fallen apart at the first glancing blow, but that's not the case with an Adrian Newey-designed super-robust RB19, and despite a few scares here and there both driver and cars duly arrived in parc ferme to claim their well deserved prize. Job done, now on to Spain for the next one.
