Alexander Albon (P8, 4 pts): 9.5/10
When Alex Albon ended first practice in third place - ahead of Fernando Alonso and Charles Leclerc - there was a bit of a stir on pit lane. When he did it again in second practice (and his Williams team mate Logan Sargeant was fifth) there was palpable shock. Okay, the team had done well last time out with a new upgrade package, but there had been nothing heralding this sort of boost in performance. Surely it must be an attention-seeking gimmick by running low fuel loads? But then Albon was even better in final practice in which a well timed run before the rain left him second quickest. Qualifying was somewhat more back to normal, but despite a scare in Q1 when the red flag came out after his quickest time had just been deleted for a track limits violation, he still made it comfortably through to Q3 leaving him lining up in eighth place on Sunday. He lost two spots at the start and spent the first half of the race running in tenth. He made his single stop under the Virtual Safety Car which gained him a spot, and then moved up another place when he was among a number of cars ambushing Carlos Sainz on lap 44. In total, Albon spent just three of the 51 laps outside the points on Sunday, which is a massive turnaround for Williams and for a beaming Albon.
Fernando Alonso (P7, 6 pts): 7/10
Plenty of teams and drivers can claim the British Grand Prix as their home race, but perhaps none more so than Aston Martin who can literally see the front doors of their gleaming new headquarters from the entrance to Silverstone. That's what makes a lacklustre performance this week hurt as much as it did for Fernando Alonso, with the AMR23 seemingly having lost that early edge it had at the start of the season which gave the Spaniard such a sprightly step in his stride. Alonso - and the team as a whole - seemed merely average this weekend despite a new package of upgrades designed to help them regain their momentum. Although he'd been in the top ten throughout practice, it was an effort to make it through to the final round of qualifying; and when he got there he just didn't have the speed to do better than ninth on the grid. Although he passed Lewis Hamilton and Alex Albon at the start, Hamilton soon had his revenge on lap 6 and Alonso spent the rest of the first stint trapped between Hamilton and Pierre Gasly (the driver who replaced him at Alpine). He gained a net position pitting under the safety car but was passed by a recovering Sergio Perez on lap 46 and had to settle for seventh, guarded from any late attack by Alex Albon having his hands full with Charles Leclerc in the closing minutes.
