Oscar Piastri (P8, 4 pts):: 7.5/10
From the highs of winning the Qatar sprint to the lows of his second retirement of the season last week in the US, there's not been a dull moment in recent outings as far as Oscar Piastri is concerned. Despite being new to the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez he started well with P6 in first practice. In qualifying he was the last McLaren standing after Lando Norris' shock early elimination and managed a respectable seventh. Sergio Perez' early exit saw him settle into sixth for the first half of the race, but he lost out to George Russell at the restart and was asked to trade places with Norris on lap 56 after he picked up damage in a clash with Yuki Tsunoda.
Daniel Ricciardo (P7, 6 pts): 8.5/10
We were frankly worried about Daniel Ricciardo when he returned to the AlphaTauri cockpit in Austin having missed five races after injuring his hand in practice at Zandvoort. He had looked rather inert last week, and acknowledged 'race rust' after being last across the line. Happily he looked a lot better this week. Even so, despite finishing in the top ten in all three practice sessions, no one was expecting him to take P4 on the grid in qualifying. This is the sort of form we haven't seen from the Aussie since his Renault days. He drove a careful, solid race but the AlphaTauri could do little about the pace of the recovering Mercedes and McLaren cars, and seventh was the best he could realistically do. And that's what he duly delivered.
