Sergio Perez (P4, 12 pts): 7.5/10
Sergio Perez' championship hopes (such as they ever were) went up in smoke in Monaco, and this week was just about gathering the pieces together and rebuilding his confidence. While certainly an improvement on what happened last week, it was still a bit of a shaky performance if we're honest: the very least a Red Bull should be able to achieve in these circumstances in Barcelona is a podium, and Perez didn't manage to pull it off. But to his credit, he was pretty close. He was FP1 and FP3 as runner-up to the dominant Verstappen (and a respectable fourth in FP2) but when it came to qualifying he came perilously close to missing the first cut at the end of a damp Q1, and then did miss out (by half a tenth) when the chequered flag came out in Q2. He admitted that he had been struggling to find the right set-up on the car and felt 'lost' at times. But the innate pace of the RB19 meant there was still everything to play for in the race: unlike George Russell he wasn't able to make up places in the opening lap, but he was soon on the move and making progress past Oscar Piastri and Nico Hulkenberg before the first pit stops kicked in. Like Verstappen, Perez had made the unusual decision to start on medium tyres meaning he was able to stay out until lap 27 - the last person to stop - by which point he was up to second. The second stint saw him dispatch Fernando Alonso, Yuki Tsunoda, Esteban Ocon, and then Carlos Sainz on lap 41. All he needed to do now was catch one or both Mercedes to be on the podium, but the need for a second stop on lap 50 left him with too much ground to cover and he came up short when the chequered flag fell.
George Russell (P3, 15 pts): 9/10
If F1 has any sense, they'll spin off the radio channel between George Russell and his deadpan Mercedes race engineer Marcus Dudley as a premium subscription service. Whether it was discussion of rain versus sweat, or Russell affronted by Dudley's dismissal of a rather good overtaking move as merely "solid", they were some of the best comedy moments of Sunday's race. Oh, and his driving was actually pretty good too. Russell had been looking solid (if you'll forgive the use of that word) on Friday with practice times in the top ten putting him ahead of team mate Lewis Hamilton, but then there was that ugly miscommunication between them toward the end of the second round of qualifying that could have been really dangerous. The stewards were unusually understanding and gave Russell and the team a warning rather than a penalty, but Russell was still left starting the race outside the top ten and behind the Red Bull of Sergio Perez. It didn't look good for him - but then came that lightning quick start to the race in which Russell took to the escape road at turn 2 and made up five places (how he got away with that, we'll never know!) He then chopped past Fernando Alonso, and then Esteban Ocon, and then Lance Stroll. He was the last person to have started on soft tyres to pit on lap 25 and then passed Stroll (again) and Sainz. His second stop briefly dropped him behind Perez, and then the final stint was all about whether Perez could chase the Mercedes down to snatch third place away. Up to now this season we'd have said that it was surely inevitable; but not in Barcelona, it turned out. Russell managed to situation the the line and couldn't wait to celebrate with Hamilton up on the podium. Has the tide in F1 just turned toward Brackley once more?
