Best Driver: Vettel. Worst Driver: Ericsson. Best Rookie (Nasr, Verstappen, Sainz): Verstappen. Best Team: Ferrari. Worst Team: Red Bull. Best Overtake: Verstappen on Ricciardo. Funniest-moment: Rosbergs comments backfiring. Most Surprising Result: It has to be Mercedes lack of pace compared to usual. Least Surprising Result: The McLarens breaking? Special Mention to: Kimi, storming drive through the field in a damaged car. Race Rating: 8/10
Amazingly, Autosport gave Ericsson a 6 and Nasr a 2! MARCUS ERICSSONSauber-Ferrari C34 Start: 9th Finish: Retired Strategy: (medium/retired) Rating: 6 After a poor run in Australia, Ericsson looked strong all weekend, putting a Sauber into Q3 for only the second time in the last 21 races. please log in to view this image Ericsson's qualifying breakthrough was wasted with an early spin © LAT Unfortunately, he undid all that good work with an overzealous attempt to repass Hulkenberg at Turn 1 on lap four, which deposited his C34 in the gravel. 12 FELIPE NASR Sauber-Ferrari C34 Start: 16th Finish: 12th Strategy: 4 stops (medium/hard/hard/hard/medium) Rating: 2 Nasr was disadvantaged by missing practice one, but the star performer of Melbourne never recovered. He struggled with the balance of the car all weekend and was way off Ericsson. He hit Raikkonen on lap one and damaged his front wing, and was the only driver who needed four stops to make the finish.
You can't criticise Nasr for the Kimi incident IMO. It was just a genuine racing incident and bad luck. So it's laughable a "respectable" publication does so, yet gives (relative) praise to a man who binned it through pure stupidity.
I only found out today that Nasr's career was to some degree funded by Raikkonen (similar to Webber and Mitch Evans arrangement). I can just imagine Raikkonen's tyre going and him screaming "I made you!" at Nasr as he passed him into T1.
