Zhou Guanyu, Sauber (P14): 6/10
To be honest, we had pretty much given up on Sauber this season, and on Zhou Guanyu in particular. He just doesn't have the experience of his team mate Valtteri Bottas to fall back on during the dark times. He seems to have conceded that Bottas is ahead of him in the running to stay at Hinwil in 2025, although to be honest the prospects for both look increasingly bleak. Amid such doom and gloom, all credit to Zhou for a spirited performance in Azerbaijan this week. Given that he came into the weekend knowing he had an engine penalty that would leave him at the back of the grid whatever he did, it was no surprise he was slowest in practice and spent qualifying valiantly trying to tow Bottas round Baku - not to any great effect to be honest. In the race he ran a long first stint on a used set of hards ahead of Esteban Ocon and Lance Stroll, which jumped him ahead of Bottas who had started on the mediums. His late stop returned him to the back but the fresh rubber gave him the speed to re-pass Ocon and Bottas, with Stroll now out of the picture. As race outings for Sauber go at the moment, that was pretty decent.
Daniel Ricciardo, RB (P13): 6.5/10
Like his team mate Yuki Tsunoda, Daniel Ricciardo seems stuck in the quagmire of RB's slump. Once F1's most high-energy shining star, Ricciardo was all but invisible this weekend in Baku where younger drivers like Oscar Piastri, Franco Colapinto and Oliver Bearman were deservedly stealing all the media limelight. It must have occurred to Ricciardo that his chances of returning to Red Bull or even remaining at RB in 2025 are now less than zero, so there's an inevitable sense of going through the motions and seeking to enjoy the day without expectations of anything more. He ran behind Tsunoda for much of the weekend and missed the first cut in qualifying while Tsunoda went through but at least he survived the first lap of the race. He went on to complete all 51 laps - a remarkable 49 of them on his initial set of used hard tyres - and was occasionally seen on the TV coverage being passed by inevitably faster cars. There's not really much more to say, which in fact rather says it all.
