Nico Hulkenberg (P12): 6.5/10
With both Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen having been confirmed as staying at Haas in 2024, it would have been nice if they had been able to celebrate the news with a strong time in the Dutch Grand Prix. But while Magnussen had his moments, Hulkenberg mainly flew below the radar and had a rather unremarkable build-up in Zandvoort: he was 18th in both of the Friday practice sessions, and only perked up a little on Saturday when he was 15th. That accurately prefigured his performance in qualifying later in the day when he did better than Magnussen and made the cut at the end of Q2. When the lights went out and the rain came down on Sunday, he was one of a number of drivers to decide that the shower would be light and brief and attempted to stay out on slicks. It was the wrong call and he was drowning, not waving as he dropped like a stone to P19. But what goes down occasionally comes back up: when the rain stopped and the circuit started to dry, he was in the vanguard of drivers setting fastest sectors. He pitted on lap 16 under the safety car for Logan Sargeant's accident but opted for medium tyres which left him stuck in the midfield DRS train. He switched back to soft tyres on lap 48 but the race was subsequently red flagged for a second torrential downpour. He gained two positions at the restart and fell in behind Lance Stroll to the finish, the final six lap sprint not troubling the Haas' notorious heavy tyre degradation for once.
Lance Stroll (P11): 6/10
By no means a disastrous weekend for Lance Stroll, but nor was it a particularly noteworthy one. He suffered from missing the whole of first practice with engine problems on the Aston Martin, but bounced back by finishing in the top ten in FP2. He slumped in final practice but perked up again in qualifying, narrowly missing out on a surprise spot in the top ten. On Sunday, the team unfortunately missed the chance to bring him in for inters when the rain started to fall at the start of the race, keeping him out for four laps by which time he has down in 18th place. He tried to make up for it by switching back to slicks on lap 9 as soon as the rain eased, but it was too soon. After a brief stint on softs he tried switching to medium tyres under the safety car for Logan Sargeant's accident, but all this back and forth had left him in last place. A return to softs on lap 34 allowed him to fight his way past Kevin Magnussen but then he got stalled behind Zhou Guanyu. When the race resumed after a red flag for heavy rain he was able to pick off Yuki Tsunoda and inch into 11th place, but he had no chance of passing Esteban Ocon to get into the points before the chequered flag.
