Nyck de Vries (P14): 5.5/10
A middling weekend for Nyck de Vries, a typical performance for a rookie without being too messy or embarrassing. He was fourth fastest in first practice and still ahead of his AlphaTauri team mate Yuki Tsunoda in FP2 later the same day. He was only a hundredth of a second slower than the Japanese in the rain-hit final practice in which he went off twice at the wet turn 11, and both drivers made it through to the second round of qualifying. De Vries narrowly pipped Tsunoda for 14th on the grid which given how well Tsunoda has been doing this season is a very creditable performance by the Dutchman, although he admitted that he was disappointed not to be able to hold on to that initial FP1 form. Unfortunately the race itself betrayed his lack of F1 experience and he lost places at the start to Tsunoda and Kevin Magnussen; he then fell in behind the Alpine of Pierre Gasly until his first visit to the pits, and once the stops had cycled through found himself back in 14th running behind Charles Leclerc's troubled Ferrari. A second round of pit stops was a rinse and repeat of the first, and de Vries resumed back in the same position for the final stint. When Leclerc eventually managed to pass Oscar Piastri, de Vries was left staring at papaya rear wing rather than a red one, but he himself was unable to make any further progress despite finding the medium compound to be the best suited of the day.
Oscar Piastri (P13): 6/10
Like his McLaren team mate Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri had a subdued start to the weekend and both cars were out of the top ten on Friday, although Piastri had the satisfaction of out-pacing his team leader in FP2. However after the rain-hit final practice, something remarkable happened in qualifying with Norris storming to third place on the grid and Piastri himself enjoying a solid run through to the final round to pick up P10 on the grid, which became ninth once Pierre Gasly's sanction for blocking during the session was applied. Piastri felt he should have done even better, explaining that he braked too late on a damp patch on his final run: "I lacked talent there", he sighed. On Sunday he found himself mugged at the start of the race and quickly lost out to George Russell, Sergio Perez, Yuki Tsunoda and Zhou Guanyu, although he then steadied the ship and was back in to the top ten by the time he made his first pit stop on lap 17. He ended up levelling out in P11. The same happened in the second round of pit stops, and in the closing laps Piastri wound up being overtaken by Pierre Gasly and Charles Leclerc. He had just been lapped by Max verstappen by the time the chequered flag came out.
