Pierre Gasly (P10, 1 pt): 6,5/10
It could have been such a different day for Pierre Gasly if not for those two blocking penalties for incidents involving Carlos Sainz and Max verstappen in qualifying. All that hard work in finishing the session in fourth was immediately undone as he dropped to tenth putting him two spots behind his team mate Esteban Ocon, who had been the quicker of the pair on Friday. To add to Gasly's woes, he had a dreadful start to the race and fell back five places on the opening lap before finally stemming the blood loss and dropping into line behind Kevin Magnussen. He made his opening set of soft tyres last for 19 laps (only Lewis Hamilton and George Russell managed better on that starter compound) which saw him briefly peak in sixth, but then he dropped out of the top ten until the second round of stops cranked up. He emerged from those in 12th, and quickly improved to 11th by picking off Oscar Piastri, but he was unable to find a way past Zhou Guanyu who was engaged in a long battle with Yuki Tsunoda over the final two points positions. Gasly just managed to fend off Charles Leclerc to the finish, but had been unable to take advantage when Zhou was run off the track. Fortunately he benefitted anyway from Tsunoda being handed a five second post-race penalty for the incident to finish just inside the top ten, contributing to a second consecutive Alpine double points finish.
Zhou Guanyu (P9, 2 pts): 7.5/10
Given that Alfa Romeo increasingly look to be in the 'winding down'; phase of their relationship with Sauber, and the C43 looking less and less on the pace as the weeks go on, this was an impressive fighting performance from Zhou Guanyu especially when compared with how his more experienced team mate Valtteri Bottas did in a car that was clearly a handful. Zhou didn't manage to insert himself into the top ten in any of the three practice sessions so it wasn't much of a surprise when he ended his qualifying run in 13th after missing the cut at the end of Q2. His stand out moment came on the first lap of the race where he was able to pick up four places, and by the time he came in for his first pit stop on lap 9 he was running in eighth place. Once the first round of stops was over he was still hanging on by his fingernails to a place in the points. After his second stop he came out right behind Yuki Tsunoda, and the rest of the afternoon saw a pitched battle between the pair with Zhou throwing everything at the AlphaTauri to gain the position. Tsunoda defended hard - too hard, as far as the stewards were concerned - and at one point forced the Alfa off track earning him a penalty. It meant that Zhou crossed the line in tenth but was classified in ninth earning him two championship points, at a stroke doubling his 2023 haul to date and putting him on an equal footing with Bottas, and meaning that Alfa are now level on points with Haas.
