Lance Stroll (P10, 1 pt): 7/10
Third quickest in the rain-hit first practice on Friday, Lance Stroll had a solid but unspectacular weekend after that. Just missing out on the top ten in FP2 and FP3, it was no surprise to see him fail to make the cut at the end of the second round of qualifying, and duly line up in 14th place for the start of the race on Sunday. He benefited from the first lap incident trigged by Zhou Guanyu in the opening corners and picked up four places, and after that the mission came down to protecting the tenth place he now found himself in. Having started on the soft tyres he joined a group of like-minded drivers pitting on lap 9 to spend the rest of the race on the hard compound, coming in a second set on lap 34. By that point he had allowed his team mate Fernando Alonso to move ahead of him and his final stint was spent following the two-time world champion to the finish line. He was under no pressure from Alex Albon who was 15s behind him on track, as Max Verstappen sailed past to put them both a lap down (no shame there, though, given Red Bull's dominance over everyone right now). One point in the bank and just one place down from Alonso at the finish, Stroll did a decent job this week.
Fernando Alonso (P9, 2 pts): 7.5/10
Aston Martin simply doesn't have the spring in its step that it had at the start of the season, and a certain lack of development has seen them drop back to the midfield pack as we approach the summer holiday. Fernando Alonso was eighth quickest at the end of FP2, which was a good start. It proved to be an accurate foretelling of his grid position after he successfully navigated the hazards of the new Alternative Tyre Allocation format to make it into the final round of qualifying on Saturday afternoon. Zhou Guanyu's problem start allowed Alonso to pick up a place on the first lap after the lights went out, but he had to hand that back on lap 8 when Sergio Perez came calling. He briefly peaked in third place during the early pit stop cycle before coming in himself on lap 20 to exchange mediums for hard tyres. He resumed in tenth, was gifted a spot by his team mate Lance Stroll who was on a different strategy, and the pair ended up running together to the line, both of them inside the points. A pale shadow of their early season performances perhaps but it keeps the engine ticking over while Aston figures out their next development step over the August break.
