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The winner of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix might never have been in doubt, but there was plenty of interest further back including the impressive debut of Ollie Bearman for Ferrari. He finished in the points and was the official F1 Driver of the Day, but how does he fare in F1i's post-race driver ratings?
Pierre Gasly (Gearbox, Lap 1): 6/10
Obviously there's not much we can say about Pierre Gasly's race, as he suffered a gearbox issue on the formation lap and crawled back to pit lane soon after the start. Not his fault, but it leaves us with little to go on when it comes to the ratings. However there were some some faint signs of an Alpine recovery before that, with Gasly in the top ten at the end of Thursday practice, and P12 in FP3. He wasn't last in qualifying (talk about damning with faint praise) and was less than a second and a half behind Max Verstappen's best time in Q1. There's no question that Alpine are still in dire straits, but at least there are some early signs that they're working on it.
Lance Stroll (Accident, Lap 7): 4/10
Glanced the wall in practice and then more emphatically in the race itself to put him into the barrier to bring out an early safety car, outclassed by his team mate in qualifying, this was not a good weekend for Lance Stroll. He's been in F1 long enough now not to be making these sorts of amateur errors, but as we've commented before it seems he topped out his potential several seasons ago and this is as good as he's going to get. Which to be honest is simply not good enough for a team like Aston Martin if they have serious aspirations to challenge the likes of McLaren and Mercedes for podiums, wins and future championships.
