Lando Norris, McLaren, (Pole, P2, 18 pts): 9/10
Are you Team Lando or Team Oscar this week? It's time to pick a side. On the one hand, Norris was faster than Piastri throughout practice and duly pipped the Aussie to pole by 0.022s in qualifying. But once again, Norris fluffed the start and found himself in a three way sandwich between Piastri (on the inside) and Max Verstappen (on the outside) and got squeezed out. he was lucky that Verstappen ran wide in the process and was subsequently forced to hand the position back. After that it seemed that Norris would have to settle for P2 (and at one point he was indeed told by his race engineer Will Joseph that the focus was on holding off Verstappen and securing a McLaren 1-2). But the team called Norris in for an early final pit stop which inadvertently gave him the undercut on Piastri, who didn't help himself by making an error and falling even further back. With a big lead gained fair and square, Norris couldn't see why he should have to give it away. The team applied some blatant emotional blackmail to bring him to heel, but sooner or later Norris is going to shrug off his perennial "good boy" image and sink his teeth into anyone who tries that on him again in the future.
Oscar Piastri, McLaren (P1, 25 pts): 9.5/10
Congratulations to Oscar Piastri for his maiden Grand Prix victory (not overlooking his sprint race win last year in Qatar, of course). He deserved more exuberant celebrations for achieving a lifetime goal than he got, the 23-year-old Melbournite sounding oddly downbeat on the team radio on his way to parc ferme after taking the chequered flag. The reason was the circumstances, with the team having to browbeat Lando Norris into surrendering a big lead to allow Piastri to claim the win which meant it didn't feel entirely earned. That's not fair, though, because Piastri did everything right: second to Norris in final practice and qualifying, he got the better start of the pair and dived down the inside to take the lead into turn 1. You can question whether that was unnecessarily risky - he struggled to make the apex and could have taken out both Norris and Max Verstappen in one sweep if it had all gone pear-shaped. But as Ayrton Senna famously said, if you see a gap and don't go for it then you're not a racing driver, let alone a future champion. The fuss about Norris' inadvertent undercut was nothing to do with him, and we hope that it doesn't sour the relationship between the pair who are currently the hottest and most in-form driver line-up on the grid.
