Lance Stroll (P10, 1 pt): 8/10
Lance Stroll was in the top ten in both second and final practice only to miss the cut at the end of Q2 when it came to qualifying, leaving him lining up in 12th place on the grid for Saturday's race. He had a good start, but that backfired on him when Nico Hulkenberg then clouted his rear right wheel at turn 1 and sent him into a spin, dumping him right to the back by the time he got going again. Other drivers who suffered similar setbacks unsurprisingly had their races completely wrecked, but Stroll wasn't taking things lying down. He made an early pit stop and then put his foot down for the second stint on softs to recover to P12. A second stop on lap 27 gave him even more impetus and by lap 42 he was set for ninth place, until he obligingly made way for his Aston Martin team mate Fernando Alonso. He still came away from the evening with his first point of the season after the best comeback drive of the race.
Fernando Alonso (P9, 2 pts): 7/10
It was a solid performance from Fernando Alonso in Bahrain, just slightly overshadowed by memories of his podium glory at the same venue this time last year, and by his Aston Martin team mate Lance Stroll pulling off an impressive recovery performance after an unfortunate first lap mishap. Alonso himself seemed to struggle for race pace early on and was picked off by Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri and Lewis Hamilton in the opening phase. The middle stint was spent shadowing Hamilton, and after his final stop he was handed a helpful leg-up by Stroll who was on a different strategy and running on older tyres. After that Alonso settled into ninth behind Piastri and duly banked the two championship points: a sensible, caution-first performance by the two-time world champion.
