Lando Norris, McLaren (P2, 18 pts): 9.5/10
Lando Norris started the weekend by topping the times in the disrupted and truncated FP1, only to end up slowest in FP2 just hours later. There was never anything to worry about though and he was always going to make it into the final round of qualifying. He popped himself onto an all-McLaren second row, just two hundredths of a second behind the Russell/Verstappen dead heat for pole. He had a quiet start to the race putting safety and tyre conservation first, and just when we thought he wasn't going to be in the mix on Sunday he suddenly exploded past the leaders on lap 20 and powered away at an impossible rate. By the time the safety car came out for Logan Sargeant's accident, he was over ten seconds down the road. Unfortunately a change of tyres and a shift in the wet conditions meant he never had the same level of speed again and his focus was on scrapping with Russell for second and not on challenging Verstappen for the lead as he'd hoped. Still, it's quite something to be disappointed at merely finishing P2: it shows just how much has our little Lando has grown and gone far in 2024.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull (P1, 25 pts): 9.5/10
There have been dominant victories which have earned Max Verstappen ten out of ten in our ratings but where he's looked rather non-plussed if not outright bored with the whole thing. Not so this week, where he was really forced to earn his place on the top step of the podium, and looked like he'd had a blast doing it. "That was a lot of fun - those kinds of races, you need them once in a while," he confirmed afterwards. It might not have been a 'perfect ten' sort of day - the weather made sure of that, and the closeness of the competition from his rivals denied him the usual Red Bull sweep - but we've rarely seen him drive better, in the race especially, especially after losing so much time on Friday with an ERS issue. Finishing qualifying in a dead heat with George Russell generated some excited headlines, and Verstappen will have known that it was only a matter of time before he dispatched the Mercedes in the race. The real surprise was the way Lando Norris ambushed them both on lap 20. But where Norris had enjoyed fortunate safety car timing to win in Miami, this time the luck went the other way and Verstappen got the break he needed to get ahead and take the win. He looked delighted by the way it had all gone, and rightly so.
