Yuki Tsunoda (P16): 5/10
Probably Yuki Tsunoda's worst performance of the season, and one can't help but blame the team for giving him inferior equipment to work with as they fall further and further behind their rivals, and ever deeper into wooden spoon territory. He was 18th quickest at the end of Friday's practice session, benefitted from the rain in FP3 to slip into the top ten. Drier conditions in the afternoon meant he never appeared remotely likely to survive the first cut in qualifying, and he duly ended up lining up in 16th on the grid on Sunday. Like his AlphaTauri team mate he opted to begin on the soft compound and made up four places at the start, but he made the tyres last only 14 laps before coming in for a set of the hard stuff which cost him all that ground, and more. He pitted a second time under the safety car to return to the soft tyres but found himself stuck in 15th place for the restart, and subsequently lost a spot to Alfa Romeo's Zhou Guanyu before he was put out of his misery by the chequered flag. "I'm satisfied with my performance, I couldn't do anything more," he insisted, before tellingly adding: "I look forward to the future, if we manage to develop our package." That 'if' is such a big word at times.
Zhou Guanyu (P15): 6/10
Zhou Guanyu made promising progress on Friday, moving up from P18 to P11 between the two sessions. Unfortunately that momentum stalled on Saturday when he missed out on all of final practice with a recharging issue on the MGU-H on the C43, leaving him scrambling to find form in qualifying and missing the first cut as a result, putting him on the penultimate row of the grid for the start of Sunday's race. At least he had dodged a penalty for impeding Esteban Ocon in the session, after being able to show that he had stayed off the racing line throughout the high-speed near-miss. When it came to the Grand Prix, Zhou found himself hemmed in when the lights went out and dropped two spots to Nyck de Vries and Valtteri Bottas, but was soon back in front of his team mate and following in the wheel marks of the AlphaTauri until he made his first pit stop on lap 24 to change from hard to medium tyres. He pitted a second time when the safety car came out for Kevin Magnussen's retirement to take a set of soft tyres, and then again to take care of debris caught up in his brake scoops. It meant he once again found himself behind de Vries, and when he finally did get around the Dutch driver on lap 44 his way forward was blocked by Yuki Tsunoda in the second AlphaTauri. He managed to pick his way past with two laps to go to cross the line in 15th after all those problems and headaches..
