Carlos Sainz – 6 – A fresh trim for the weekend wasn’t quite enough to see the Spaniard trouble the points for a second race in a row. But it felt like he got the most out of the equipment he has at Williams, with no heroics.<\/p>\n
Franco Colapinto – 4 – How quickly things can change after an immense race in China. Not at one with the Alpine car, and a scary moment slowing heavily into Spoon Curve causing Ollie Bearman’s 50G crash is a stark reminder of the safety measures implemented in today’s Formula 1.<\/p>\n
Sergio Perez – 7 – A rocky start to the weekend, colliding with the Williams of Alex Albon and still complaining of various, vague deployment issues. But outqualified Cadillac team-mate Valtteri Bottas and ahead of both Aston Martins in the race. <\/p>\n
Fernando Alonso – 7 – First time seeing the chequered flag this year! I think that’s the only high Alonso and Aston Martin can take from this weekend. A much needed few weeks now before the Miami Grand Prix. <\/p>\n
Valtteri Bottas – 6 – Despite having an upgrade on the car and seemingly making improvements, Perez had the better of him in Japan.<\/p>\n
Alex Albon – 5 – Another tough weekend and some cryptic radio messages in qualifying highlight all is not well within the Williams camp. Sacrificed his race for a testing session.<\/p>\n
Lance Stroll – 5 – A second consecutive year qualifying last for the Japanese Grand Prix and pretty much glued to the back of the pack until Aston Martin retired the car.<\/p>\n
Oliver Bearman – 4 – Having been one of the stars of the season so far, Japan did not go his way. Bearman was eliminated in Q1 with a suspected technical issue but even when he could get a lap in he didn’t deliver on pace. The crash in the race wasn’t his fault but perhaps he could have judged his overspeed a tad better – easy for me to say. Thankfully, he walked away from a huge shunt and will have time to recover fully before we go racing again in early May. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Sainz – 6 – A fresh trim for the weekend wasn’t quite enough to see the Spaniard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-501826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}