Who says Paul Ricard only produces boring races. Today’s race was an intense one which saw Red Bull do to Mercedes what they did to them in Barcelona. A late pitstop and Max Verstappen managed to chip away at Lewis Hamilton’s lead, to take a convincing victory.
Max squandered the first corner which allowed Lewis through but managed to get the undercut in the first round of pitstops. The tyres degraded a lot more than expected which led to many switching to a two stop. Red Bull pulled the trigger and Max had the pace to get past with two laps to go and extend his championship lead to 12 points.
Lewis Hamilton came home in second ahead of a great strategical drive from Sergio Perez, who managed to get past Valtteri Bottas in the closing stages. Valtteri was screwed by the strategy and lacked pace at the end.
The two McLarens of Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo had a solid race to finish in fifth and sixth place, with Daniel making some feisty moves that we have gotten accustomed to from him. Pierre Gasly drove another strong race to finish in seventh ahead of Fernando Alonso in eighth. Whilst the two Aston Martins of Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll managed the one stop to perfection, and finished in the final 2 points paying positions, with the latter finishing in tenth from nineteenth.
It was a dismal race for Ferrari, with both drivers lacking race pace, with Carlos Sainz finishing in eleventh and Charles Leclerc finishing in sixteenth. However it was a good drive from George Russell who finished in twelfth for Williams. Yuki Tsunoda fought his way to thirteenth from the back ahead of a disappointing home race for Esteban Ocon. Antonio Giovinazzi finished in fifteenth ahead of Charles Leclerc in sixteenth and Kimi Raikkonen in seventeenth. Nicholas Latifi finished in eighteenth with the two Haas cars of Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin rounding out the finishers, all 20 cars seeing the checkered flag.
Here is the result of the French Grand Prix.
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