Lance Stroll (Rear wing damage, Lap 21): 5/10
When Lance Stroll sat out last week's race in Singapore suffering the after effects of a heavy crash in qualifying, rumours abounded that maybe Sebastian Vettel would take the seat on a one-off basis in Suzuka to achieve his 300th Grand Prix start at a circuit he absolutely loved. Instead of that fairytale story we got a stolid but uninvolving tale of Stroll plodding around the circuit making little impression while Vettel was left tending to his bees at turn 1. It's a shame that it wasn't the other way around, but at least there were no serious missteps from Stroll this time. Despite missing the first cut in qualifying and starting alongside Valtteri Bottas, he was able to stay out of trouble at the start of the race. Unfortunately the pit crew then spotted a problem with his rear wing during his pit stop and decided that Stroll's day was done. No one was terribly distraught, although the bees might have been ever so slightly miffed.
Logan Sargeant (Accident damage, Lap 23): 2.5/10
After the latest driver announcements this week, Logan Sargeant's seat at Williams is pretty much the only undecided berth for 2023, so all eyes are on whether the American will get a second season in F1. And unfortunately, it couldn't have gone worse for him at Suzuka if he'd tried. He finished Friday practice slowest of anyone, and then managed to suffer a heavy crash on his first lap of qualifying on Saturday. The FW45 was rebuilt overnight at the cost of a pit lane start and a ten second pit stop penalty, and his zeal to try and recover something from the already bleak situation ended up with him taking out Valtteri Bottas with extreme prejudice after the safety car restart. Sargeant stumbled on for a time, perhaps putting off facing James Vowles in the Williams garage, but in the end the damage forced him to retire. Already in a deep hole, Sargeant just can't seem to stop digging at the moment.
