The team that came into the French Grand Prix with some momentum were Ferrari, after winning the last two events in Silverstone and the Red Bull Ring with victories for both Spanish driver Carlos Sainz and Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc. The only question that still hangs over the heads of the Scuderia was whether they had sorted out the reliability of the F1-75. Red Bull would have been wanting to write the wrongs of the last couple of races. After winning 6 races in a row, the Austrian outfit needed to come back with a statement after the British Grand Prix where Max Verstappen had picked up a loose bit of debris which led to a loss of downforce at the rear of the car and Sergio Perez picking up damage after a divebomb from Charles Leclerc on lap 2.
Then at the Austrian Grand Prix, the weekend didn’t start off well when Sergio Perez got his fastest lap in Q2 and Q3 deleted for exceeding track limits at turn 8 but that only occurred once qualifying for the sprint race had been concluded. Checo’s recovery in the sprint saw him go from P13 to P5 behind his team-mate Max Verstappen, both Ferrari drivers and George Russell. Max on the other hand led every lap available but at the end of Saturday’s sprint race, Leclerc was quietly confident for Sunday’s race. Moving onto Sunday’s race and that was the first real sign of struggles for Red Bull at their home race, Perez had been spun round by George Russell which ultimately ended in early retirement from the race while Max’s race was filled with high tyre wear compared to the Ferrari’s and an easy 1-2 for Ferrari turned into a Ferrari 1-DNF when Carlos Sainz’s engine decided to give up the ghost and catch fire.
After George Russell had spun round Perez and then consequently suffered front wing damage, he would then get slapped with a 5 second penalty but would recover to take a solid P4 finish behind team-mate Lewis Hamilton who had been fighting with both Haas drivers in the sprint race. The fightback from Lewis after his early season form has been impressive, a podium in Canada kickstarted a run of three consecutive coming into the French GP. Mercedes brought more upgrades onto the W13 for France and given at previous Grand Prix’s that Mercedes have brought upgrades they have seen themselves closer to the lead pack. The first time they brought upgrades was at the Spanish Grand Prix back in May in which even though it didn’t bring much in terms of positions gained it did bring them closer to the Red Bull’s and Ferrari’s in terms of race pace and race time. The next time they brought a major upgrade was at Silverstone and in the hands of Lewis Hamilton, they worked magically giving Hamilton a legitimate chance of fighting for victory at his home race. Ultimately he ended up missing out on that victory but still got a podium which has boosted morale at the Brackely based team.
French Grand Prix weekend:
Free Practice One:
Just like every practice session it is always hard to tell what the pecking order is at both ends of the pitlane and that was no different for both Friday practice sessions. Upfront it was still as close as ever between Ferrari and Red Bull, in fact during the 1st practice session less than a tenth of a second separate title rivals Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen with Carlos Sainz a further three tenths back from his team-mate. The biggest surprise of the session was the margin of difference between Checo Perez and Max Verstappen, a whopping 1.2 seconds separated the pair. We also two driver changes for the opening practice session, Alfa Romeo’s reserve Polish driver Robert Kubica stepped in for Finnish driver Valtteri Bottas and Mercedes Reserve Dutch driver Nyck De Vries stepped in for Lewis Hamilton to fulfil one of Formula One’s new regulations, this one being to run a reserve driver in two practice sessions. This was the first time in 300 Grand Prix race weekends where Lewis had given up his car in first practice.
Mercedes weren’t the only team that brought upgrades to circuit Paul Ricard, Alpha Tauri brought upgrades that both Pierre Gasly and Alpha Tauri have been needing for some time as the last time that happened was back at round 4 at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix back in April. After a tough period for the team with both drivers picking up a season best result of 5th at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with Pierre Gasly while Yuki Tsunoda has a season best of 10th place at the Spanish Grand Prix. It was a case of mixed emotions for the team with Gasly up there in P5 and just over a second off the pace while Yuki Tsunoda was down in P18 and over two seconds off the pace.
McLaren also brought upgrades to the MCL36 and didn’t really show their hand in the first session. British driver Lando Norris had the pre-France spec car while Australian Daniel Ricciardo was testing the new parts. This was a planned move by McLaren so they could get more knowledge of the new spec parts compared to the older spec parts.
Alex Albon finished in a very remarkable 8th place for Williams while team-mate Nicholas Latifi finally had the updates added onto his car finished in P20. Zhou Guanyu finished in P11 while stand-in driver Robert Kubica finished his outing in P19. 2005 and 2006 World Champion Fernando Alonso was 15th for Alpine while home hero Esteban Ocon was 13th . Stuck in between the Alpine sandwich was Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel with Canadian team-mate Lance Stroll in P12. While the two Haas cars finished 16th and 17th with Mick Schumacher ahead of team-mate Kevin Magnussen.
Based on the first practice session a common theme carried on with the midfield pack being so tightly even, with a couple of tenths either gaining the driver a spot or losing a spot. The midfield this year has been so mixed up that it has always been hard to predict which team is the strongest outfit and who have fallen down the pecking order with or without upgrades to the car. Each car has their own strengths and weaknesses which also makes predicting the pecking order even harder.
Free Practice 2:
After a couple of hours break and lots of data consumed by the engineers and drivers, 2nd practice commenced. A lot of laps get turned over with differing track conditions that usually replicate the same track and air temperatures that teams and drivers both will experience come race day. With Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas back in their cars for the session, the real hard work started with gathering all the required data for Sunday’s race.
Over one lap pace and with low fuel, it was the Ferrari’s to show that the qualifying pace was still there. It was Carlos Sainz who was the faster of the two Ferrari drivers, however if he can replicate that during qualifying he won’t start on pole position after Ferrari took a new Control Electronics which necessitates a 10-place grid penalty. Sainz clocked a 1:32:527 on six-lap old tyres and was a tenth of a second ahead of team-mate Charles Leclerc.
The expected difference between the medium compound tyre and the soft compound tyre was about 0.8 seconds and both Ferrari drivers found between 0.8 and 1 second between the two tyres.
Red Bull’s threat came in the form Dutch sensation Max Verstappen but he was slower than both the Ferrari’s. Max had problems with understeer during the opening sector of the lap which was a setback to the Austrian team.
Mercedes' one lap pace looked better with George Russell 7 tenths back from Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton was a couple of tenths back from his team-mate. Throughout both practice sessions the Mercedes upgrades looked to have worked even though Hamilton had stated that the W13 was slower than what they had expected.
Not for the first time this season, Lando Norris was best of the rest with the updates on his car for the session ending up in 6th place with team-mate Daniel Ricciardo in P9. The difference between the two cars being around four tenths of a second. Filling in between the two McLaren’s were Pierre Gasly in the Alpha Tauri, who was having one of his better practice sessions. Kevin Magnussen also had a big turn around from FP1, where he finished in P17 to FP2 where he finished in P8.
Sergio Perez was out of sequence with his fellow drivers with his soft tyre run but even when he did it his run, he finished in a lowly P10 a full second off his team-mate.
The battle at Alpine was settled by 2-time F1 World Champion Fernando Alonso, who finished four tenths ahead of team-mate Esteban Ocon who ended the day in 18th place. Valtteri Bottas took back his Alfa Romeo and finished in P12 with Zhou Guanyu finishing in 17th place.
Alpha Tauri looked to have taken a step backwards from their impressive results in FP1 with Pierre Gasly finishing the soft tyre run in P7 and Yuki Tsunoda finishing down the order in P14 with the gap between the pair of them being six tenths of a second.
Aston Martin’s day closed with a P13 and a P15 with Sebastian Vettel finishing ahead of team-mate Lance Stroll. Williams have looked to have struggled in recent races and that continued with Alex Albon finishing in P16 and Nicholas Latifi , running the new updates, finishing in P10.
Free Practice 3:
A new day, another practice session to dial the drivers in for qualifying with any changes made to the car overnight. Going into the session there were a couple of questions that would need to be answered. How did the McLaren upgrades perform compared to the car before the updates? Have Ferrari focussed more on qualifying than the race? Are Red Bull favourites for the race? Will Carlos Sainz take more engine penalties or just stick with a new ECU?
Mercedes used the third practice session to experiment with different rear-wing levels, with Lewis Hamilton on a higher downforce setup compared to team-mate George Russell, who was running a lower downforce setup. The higher rear-wing wasn’t much slower than the lower rear-wing on the straights, after a third of the session with the top speed of the Red Bull being 335 KPH and 334 KPH compared to the Mercedes being 317 KPH and 318 KPH.
20 minutes into the session and one question was already answered which was that Ferrari had decided to take more engine components on Carlos Sainz car meaning instead of a 10-place grid penalty, it would in fact send the Spaniard right to the back of the grid with Kevin Magnussen, Another Ferrari powered car. Red Bull and Ferrari thought differently for the race, Red Bull kept two sets of hards and one set of mediums whereas Ferrari kept two mediums and one new set of hards.
Going back to one lap pace then the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz went fastest with a 1:32:626 on the second flying lap on the same soft tyres compared to his team-mate who came over the radio and complained about the tyres being dead on the second lap. Then came Red Bull’s response and Max Verstappen was three and a half tenths faster than Sainz but was slower than the Ferrari in the final sector and six tenths faster than Charles Leclerc. Red Bull needed to see more performance from Sergio Perez, with the Mexican around a second off his Dutch counterpart.
The surprising team in the final session was Williams, with Alex Albon finishing up in the top 10 while team-mate Nicholas Latifi showed what the upgrades had done to the car by finishing the session in 12th place but like most of the previous sessions, the midfield pecking order is so tightly matched that one mistakes could find themselves in a lower position.
Little over a second separated Alpine’s Fernando Alonso in 7th place to Sebastian Vettel in P20. If you could have read anything into the practice finishing positions or the lap times then all the signs were that qualifying was going to be the last man over the line who gets the best track conditions and has the better chance of setting a better lap time than their rivals.
With the temperature rising, Aston Martin went backwards in the hands of Lance Stroll only going faster than his team-mate Sebastian Vettel who didn’t set a lap time on the soft tyre, Who had suffered floor damage earlier in the session. This wasn’t what Aston Martin wanted given the pace that their rivals Williams had been shown throughout the third practice session.
Another team struggling to unlock their pace is Alfa Romeo once again it looked like they were struggling to unlock a bit from either the car or the tyres as the two drivers finished P14 and P15, although it is only practice and it’s too hard to read anything into it due to differing fuel loads, engine modes or even aerodynamic setup. Don’t be surprised if there was to be a surprise in Q1 and Q2.
Qualifying:
So now knowing that Carlos Sainz is going to be starting at the back of the grid, Ferrari pinned all its hopes on qualifying master Charles Leclerc to dent Red Bull’s optimism of securing pole position.
A case of what could have been for Mick Schumacher, after having set a lap at the end of Q1 to get safely into top 10 and into Q2. He did everything right at the end of qualifying but when he returned to the pitlane he would be told that his fastest Q1 lap had been deleted at turn 3 for exceeding track limits. It was a fair call by the race stewards as he looked a couple of mm outside the white line but it did show how much Mick was pushing now that he has found his confidence with this generation of cars.
It’s no secret that Daniel Ricciardo is struggling to adapt to the MCL36 but this isn’t the first time that he has struggled to come anywhere close to his team-mate Lando Norris. It was once again shown around Paul Ricard, both cars have the new upgrades so it once again poses the question of what exactly is it that Ricciardo is struggling with. We all want to see the McLaren-Daniel Ricciardo partnership to work given Daniel’s talent and late braking overtakes he pulled off at Red Bull and at times with Renault. In the twelve qualifying sessions that have taken place this season, Lando has beaten Daniel in ten of the twelve events. Only Spain and Canada are where the Australian has out-qualified the Brit.
It’s a case of what could have been with Daniel given that Lando had qualified ahead of George Russell’s Mercedes and ahead of drivers and constructors that he and McLaren are fighting in the drivers and constructors championships. But all is not lost for Daniel, as penalties given to Carlos Sainz and Kevin Magnussen means that the Australian will start the Grand Prix in 9th place.
Williams looked like they were the team to look out for in qualifying but their practice three results really did flatter them highly. In FP3 the Williams duo of Alex Albon and Nicholas Latifi looked to have rivals on the back foot with a P8 and P12 finish, however a P20 and a P15 qualifying result before penalties got taken into consideration showed where Williams are compared to their competitors.
After a scintillating season, it was no surprise that we saw Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen on the front row again for the sixth time this season. No matter what session it is, the pair always put on a battle for who’s coming on top. Verstappen and Leclerc now have the same amount of pole positions in their young, illustrious careers. It all came down to the second flying lap and with Verstappen not improving in any sectors on the lap, it was an open goal for Leclerc. With Sainz starting at the back of the grid, it only made sense to play the team game and give any advantage possible to Leclerc which is exactly what happened. It wasn’t a risk that Red Bull could have done for Verstappen, as they thought that the Mercedes drivers were too close for comfort to Sergio Perez.
What a season Lando Norris is having at McLaren, in a car that has gone backwards in performance from the 2021 car the Brit has done a stellar job with his performances. After a rocky start in Bahrain, Lando has at times out-driven the car. A 3rd place at Imola combined with a good run of points finishing.
Qualifying for the French GP was no different, Q1 was the typical Lando Norris qualifying segment above cars that he had no right to be ahead of. Q2 was more a risk/reward strategy from McLaren, only running one set of soft tyres and getting into Q3. Once again another typical Lando Norris qualifying happened somewhat going under the radar with most people expecting him to be 6th place behind the Ferrari, Red Bulls and Mercedes drivers but on the last flying lap of the session, he exceeded those expectations and split both the Mercedes drivers.
Race Report:
A warm start to race day with both the air and track temperatures rising, the on-track action started early. In a thrilling Formula 2 race, it was Red Bull backed driver Ayuma Iwasa who came out on top with French team Dams at their home race. The Japanese driver dominated the feature race and took victory from Frenchman Theo Pourchaire and Frederik Vesti. It was a good day for the Red Bull young drivers after Liam Lawson took the sprint race victory in Saturday’s race.
All the question marks going into the main event was who would come out on top, would it be Ferrari who were lacking on the straights but being stronger in the low/high speed corners of sectors 1&3 or would it be Red Bull with their straight line speed for sector 2 and give up time in sectors 1&3. Whoever was to come out on top would have earned it, especially with the extreme air temperatures pounding on the track. Raising the on track temperatures led to a possibility of pushing the strategy from a one stop with high amount of tyre conservation or go on a two stop with a low amount of tyre conservation.
Given that it’s two Red Bull’s against one Ferrari, it would be smart to do the latter with Max Verstappen going aggressive with the strategy while Sergio Perez, who is known to be good at tire saving, attempts to do the one stop strategy and drive Ferrari into a decision of stay out on used hard tyres or go onto a new set of mediums. It’s more than likely that most of the cars will start on medium compound tyres and run to the pit window of lap 18-27 and change onto the hard tyre for the final 30 laps.
If Ferrari want to be aggressive with strategy then they could perform a two stop race with Charles Leclerc, bring him in around lap 13-20 move onto the hard tire and do the middle stint for 20 laps and use the fresh set of mediums that Ferrari had saved during the final practice session. Red Bull on the other hand saved a new set of hard tyres, so they could in theory perform a two stop with Verstappen and use both sets of hard tyres. Perez in the meantime could start on the mediums run long and switch to the hard tyres, which would allow Verstappen to pit early and Perez to hold up Leclerc.
Before the start of the race, all the talk of the paddock was what tyres would everyone start on. Valtteri Bottas, Pierre Gasly and Carlos Sainz were all the hard tyre starts while everyone else all started on mediums on 51 degree Celsius track temperature while the air temperature reached a toasty 31 degrees.
Five lights were out and it was Lewis Hamilton who made the most of a good start by overtaking the second Red Bull of Sergio Perez in turn 1. Pole-sitter Charles Leclerc and 2nd place Max Verstappen both got good starts off the front row and they were equal on pace throughout the first stint.
Esteban Ocon was locked into a battle with Alpha Tauri’s Yuki Tsunoda until Ocon made a move on Tsunoda but took too much entry kerb and ended up spinning Tsunoda and received a 5 -second time penalty, which would be served during the first round of pit-stops.
With Carlos Sainz starting on the back row of the grid, due to new engine components, it took him until lap 13 to break into the points scoring places by overtaking the Aston Martin of Lance Stroll for 10th place.
At this point of the race all the drivers had gone into tyre conservation mode and Max had dropped outside the 1 second mark to get the DRS on Leclerc. Leclerc however started to form a blister on the front right tyre but they still were a handful of laps from the pitstop. Lap 16, with Verstappen in the undercut range of Leclerc, Red Bull triggered the first stop with 2.4 second stop but with the longer pit-lane speed limit zone Verstappen would come out in P7 behind Fernando Alonso and Lando Norris.
Two laps later, Leclerc and Ferrari never reacted to the early pit-stop for Verstappen but things would turn from good to bad for the Monegasque after a spin ended up in the barrier and out the race that would bring out the safety car. Initial reaction was that it may have been a throttle issue after Leclerc’s radio from the crash. During the safety car period the pit-lane became busy and Sainz had a slow stop and was released into the path of Nicholas Latifi who had to slam on the brakes to avoid a pit-lane crash. Tsunoda was forced into early retirement and then the safety car came in and racing resumed.
Another brief yellow flag was thrown when Haas driver Mick Schumacher was hit by the Alfa-Romeo of Zhou Guanyu who lost the rear on the exit of turn 11. The resulting investigation of the incident was deemed to be worthy of a 5-second time penalty for Zhou.
With the track temperature being stable, the remaining Ferrari of Sainz started to suffer the same front right tyre blistering that his team-mate had done earlier in the race.
A battle between Nicholas Latifi and Kevin Magnussen was getting spicy and contact was made between the pair, on the entrance of turn 2 with Latifi being spun around that resulted in both getting damage and having to retire from the race.
Just as Sainz, who was carrying a 5-second, had started engaging in a battle with Perez, Ferrari gave him the call to pit as they believed that they were low on the tyre life and a tyre failure was going to occur. This freed up George Russell to have an attack on Perez, who at this stage burnt his tyres. The battle was getting intense and with a dozen or so laps left the pair came together and George was losing his call on the team-radio.
With four laps to go, Zhou’s Alfa-Romeo decided it was time to finish early and brought out a late virtual safety car which could have scuppered any attempts of an overtake from Russell on Perez but the mind games started when the VSC was drawn in and Russell was able to catch Perez sleeping and got himself on the final step of the podium.
Lap 53, the chequered flag was waving for championship leader Max Verstappen, with Lewis Hamilton second and George Russell third. Sergio Perez fourth and Carlos Sainz fifth.
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