Grand Prix Rejects

1. Logan Sargeant. An excellent debut weekend all things considered, he should hopefully pick up some points later in the season.

2. Alex Albon. Nearly reached Q3 and scored a precious point for Williams.

Honourable mention to Lance Stroll, battled through crippling pain to finish 6th.

Alonsooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

1) Logan Sargeant: A pretty solid result for his debut, didn't seem to have any crazy mistakes or anything.

2) Fernando Alonso making an actually good career move post-Renault: Alonso's actual pace was not improbable, but ending up in what seems to be a decent car for once is a surprise.

Honourable Mentions: Lance Stroll, Alex Albon.

1. Pierre Gasly - The Alpine didn't show pace in pre-season testing and neither it did during the weekend. He went from last to 9th. Pretty impressive.

2. Williams - Both Sargeant and Albon ran really good races, the car had plenty of race pace in the midfield.

HM to Lance Stroll for points with half a working wrist and Fernando Alonso for putting one of his finest drives today.

1- Lance Stroll- decent race despite having pins in both wrists holding them together- on the pace

2- Pierre Gasly- last to 9th pretty decent run (compared to his teammate at least)

Hm- Williams- not dead last and a point for Albon, good going!

Alonso: great drive to the podium, well deserved.

Logan Sargeant: very decent debut

HM:
Stroll, getting a good finish despite his wrists.
Gasly, great recovery after the qualifying bathplug up

Frisky Fernando Alonso - on pace and passing Mercedes and Ferrari on track

1 Williams - good team performance

2 Gasly - good solo work

3 Alonso - good team choice

Aston Martin as both drivers exceeded expectations.

Albon for scoring.

Fernando Alonso: Simply amazing, we can forget the talk about him being too old for F1. And he's even managed to make me (a former hater) root for him.

Honorable mention: Logan Sargeant: After all the Piastri and De Vries hype, I never expected him to be the top rookie in qualifying and the race. Not too far behind Albon either.

Gotta be Alonso - livened up what in all honesty was a pretty boring race at the front. And for once he's made a good team switch!

HMs to Williams as a whole - well up there in midfield but especially great ddebut from Sargeant, and Gasly going from last to 9th (in contrast to his teammate).

Williams - I'd have been happy with them not being last this year. I may get my wish. Very solid debut from Sargeant.

Gasly - Nice charge

Infinite improbability would exclude Fernando for me as I think most of us would have reasonably put money on it last week. Certainly not Williams, who we all thought were still solidly last, doing as well as the genuinely did. Outstanding start to the season.

1. I'm so happy for Fernando I can't nominate anyone else. Great entertainment value to.
2. Gasly. Good job.
HM. Williams for making a Duracell battery work with a blue car.

1. Lance Stroll - Essentially driving with no pre-season testing (kind of cause of his fault somewhat) and then with injuries still driving to 6th. Solid

2. Pierre Gasly - 20th to 9th is a great job.

Not nominating Alonso cause it wasn't unexpected oddly enough with all the chatter about AM's race pace.

Shout out - Logan. I always believed in him.

Aston Martin in general - Alonso for his great drive to the podium and Stroll for being not too far behind despite his injuries and no preseason testing. Good choices from the pitwall too.

Williams - Surprising pace from both drivers. Well done

Lance Stroll - considering I thought he wouldn't race after his struggles in FP2, there can't be any other choice. Although he came this close to becoming ROTR instead.

Logan Sargeant - I was expecting a Latifiesque performance from him, but he ran Albon pretty close and didn't put a foot wrong.

Plenty of worthy candidates this time. On a pre-social media era, Alonso would have taken this one at a canter, no one would have believed that his times were for real until qualifying at least. Gasly did well, but he put himself on the back foot, and I think Alpine grossly underperformed: on a clean weekend, Ocon and most certainly Alonso would have been a remote threat for the Mercedeses, that car is clearly the fifth package (although Alfa isn't far behind). Albon was great - but with so many improbable drives of his to 10th-11th-12th, I guess it stops being so improbable

Alonso, enough said.

Honourable mention to Stroll through for coming 6th in a race he very nearly didn't even take part in though I am a bit gutted for Drugovich.

Many candidates when the lights went out on Sunday.

Williams, for having a genuinely not-awful car. I predicted that they would be again way way back, but they were actually competent and enjoyable to watch there on track. Admittedly they drew some attention for the sheer fact they weren't last, but it was still a nice positive sign to see them beat Haas, McLaren, and even possibly another team or two very strongly on pace.

Lance Stroll, for somehow managing to come out of the weekend smelling of roses. He truly is this generation's Maldonado, but he proved the naysayers wrong when he climbed into the car with damaged hands, no testing, and still brought it home in a decent points position. Admittedly he bumped his teammate along the way, but nobody got hurt and the ending was so positive that everyone else has conveniently forgotten that the L1 collision even happened

Fernando Alonso. Is there anyone not happy with seeing a 41-year-old veteran overtake a seven-time world champion, the next new world champion, and a Ferrari, to take a podium on merit? His move on Hamilton outside of the DRS area was brilliant, and will take some topping for "overtake of the x".

For once there’s a lot of genuine candidates for this, so many in fact it was difficult to pick

Williams: Well well well, maybe the new addition of James Volwes is actually working wonders. We expected both cars to be near the back but they mixed it with the lower midfield all weekend and were desperately unlucky not to get both cars in Q2. Both drivers raced well and Albon gave them reward with a point. May surprise a few this year.

Aston Martin (specifically Stroll): Aston Martin looked genuinely quick in testing but it’s one thing to do it then and quite another to do it when the serious stuff gets underway, they passed with flying colours. You can talk about what a force of nature Alonso is all you like but the fact is Aston Martin scored a podium on merit and that’s something I thought I’d never say after Australia last year.

I want to give special mention to Lance Stroll though. He’s no Alonso and will probably lose the teammate H2H but considering he was lucky to be racing at all and was probably 80% fit at best that was a mega effort to beat Russell on merit despite nearly committing the unthinkable on Fernando at the start. This is the Lance we saw for a bit in 2020 and more of that would be just fine.

HM: Pierre Gasly: Alpine didn’t pull up any trees on either visit to Bahrain and starting last meant Gasly should have been in for a long haul race. Good effort from him to reach the points while his teammate self destructed.

1. Aston Martin
Testing gave some idea that they are better but still test is test and race weekend is race weekend.

2. Alex Albon
Points on the first race was a good performance.

Fernando Alonso
He is a real Benjamin Button, his race craft gets better as he got older!

Pierre Gasly
What a recovery drive from him, I hope he and ocon got along well and solve their issues inorder to bring victories for alpine and themselves...