Kevin Magnussen (P18): 4.5/10
The Haas is showing flashes of brilliance over the course of the weekend, but is never able to put enough of them together long enough to deliver a decent result. Kevin Magnussen was a promising seventh in first practice, but slipped to 15th in FP2 and then ended up 17th in final practice and qualifying after missing the first cut. He then managed to get a brilliant start to the race and gained four places on the opening lap to run in 13th. An early pit stop to trade soft tyres for mediums dropped him down the order again and he found himself stuck behind Valtteri Bottas for a spell. Once he got past the Alfa Romeo he followed in the wheel marks of his team mate Nico Hulkenberg as both made progress on their fresh tyres, but the VF-23 suffered from high degradation that meant Magnussen was forced into a three-stopper over the course of the afternoon, the last on lap 42 dropping him down to 19th place. By the end he had managed to re-pass one Williams (Logan Sargeant) but not the other (Alex Albon) and was ahead of Bottas again, but that was the limit of his achievement. With three laps to go he was passed by the compromised McLaren of Lando Norris to leave him crossing the line in P18.
Lando Norris (P17): 6/10
A roller coaster ride for Lando Norris this weekend, who was sounding downbeat on Friday, self-diagnosing having made too many mistakes in practice that had left him down in P14 at the end of FP2 which suggested that he would be nowhere in qualifying. The changeable conditions in final practice seemed to turn things around, and his willingness to try slicks while the track was still wet buoyed his confidence in the afternoon and suddenly he was flying, ending up in third place at the end of Q3 which wasn't what anyone had been expecting, least of all Norris himself. If we stopped the story there then we'd be giving the Briton a solid nine out of ten. Unfortunately his race effectively lasted only a few hundred yards before he hit Lewis Hamilton going into the first corner, and he had to limp back to pit lane for a new front wing which put him a long way behind anyone else. With no retirements or incidents during the race, there was no way back for him from there. He did quite well to pick off a few backmarkers before the chequered flag and cross the line in 17th place. But the fact remains that if he'd made it through that first corner unscathed, he could have been competing for decent points in Barcelona - although realistically a place in the top three was always going to be asking too much.
