Sergio Perez (P2, 18 pts): 9/10
Sergio Perez didn't put a foot wrong this weekend, with the exception of not being quite as fast as his Red Bull team mate Max Verstappen. But in every other respect he put in exactly the sort of performance that Christian Horner and Helmut Marko have been demanding from him. He was always right there on hand in case anything should happen to Verstappen (such as the brake fire in Australia) and he was reliable back-up throughout. After finishing second in FP1 and FP3, he then joined Verstappen on the front row of the grid in a Red Bull 1-2 lock-out having been pipped to pole by just 0.066s. With the exception of the way the staggered pit stops played out, he ran in a strong second all afternoon. While he might have been 12.5s off his team mate by the end, he himself had eight seconds in hand over Carlos Sainz in second place which is really pretty impressive in its own right.
Max Verstappen (Pole, P1, Fastest lap, 26 pts): 10/10
We've resisted giving Max Verstappen a perfect score of ten in the first three races by finding some sort of flaw through our nitpicking of his performance. We sat down to do the same again this weekend, and frankly we're stumped. Was there anything of significance that he did wrong in Suzuka? Fastest in FP1, he sat out the wet Friday afternoon session and then strolled bak in on Saturday morning to top final practice. And then every round of qualifying, although he cut it fine in Q3 with Sergio Perez just 0.066s slower. Having taken pole he then won the race with a 12.5s lead over Perez while also stealing the point for fastest lap. It was a genuinely immaculate performance over the course of the entire weekend, all the more so for coming off such a frustrating time for him and the team in Australia. It was the sort of demonstration that ten-out-of-ten scores were invented for, and so for once we have no hesitation in yielding to the inevitable. To use Verstappen's own word, it had all been rather lovely for him.
