Qualy Report: @LewisHamilton beats @ValtteriBottas to claim #FrenchGP pole. #F1

Lewis Hamilton took his third pole position of the 2019 championship season in qualifying at the Circuit Paul Ricard for the French Grand Prix.

 

 

The Briton’s Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas held a slight advantage at the top in the Q1 and Q2 stages but Hamilton claimed the top of the time-sheets in the initial run during Q3 posting a 1:28.448.

 

Hamilton then improved to a 1:28.319 on his final flyer to clinch his 86th Formula 1 career pole position and broke the lap record.

 

Bottas had a messy lap and was unable to improve on his initial hot lap but wound up 0.286 behind his team-mate, which was good enough to secure a Silver Arrows front-row lockout.

 

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was 0.646 off the Briton’s benchmark time taking third position and will start alongside fourth-placed Red Bull of Max Verstappen.

 

The Dutchman also struggled in qualifying and was more than four tenths adrift of Leclerc, but only 0.009 thousandths quicker than fifth-placed McLaren of Lando Norris.

 

Carlos Sainz followed his team-mate to take sixth place on the grid, to cap off the Woking-based outfit’s promising weekend at Le Castellet so far.

 

The other Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel qualified a low seventh and 1.480 seconds off of Hamilton’s time having aborted his initial flyer.

 

The German reported missing an upshift over the radio, had a scare at turn one before a later a trip into the run-off area on his first hot lap and could not put together a strong enough lap on his final flying lap.

 

Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo will start eighth on the grid and in-front of Red Bull Racing’s Pierre Gasly who was ninth quickest.

 

Alfa Romeo Racing’s Antonio Giovinazzi qualified in tenth place, with the Italian’s first attempt in the final qualifying stage not going so well after a solid lap late in Q2 allowed him to make Q3.

 

Eight drivers of the top 10 will be starting the French Grand Prix with the yellow-branded medium compounds having used them to set their best efforts in Q2, while only Giovinazzi and Gasly are beginning the race on the softer rubber.

 

Toro Rosso’s Alexander Albon was demoted to 11th by Gasly at the end of Q2, who snatched the final Q3 spot by just four hundredths of a second.

 

Alfa Romeo Racing’s Kimi Raikkonen could not match his team-mate Giovinazzi’s pace to make a Q3 appearance and wound up 12th quickest, with the 2007 World Champion starting in-front of Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg who attempted to make the top ten shootout on the medium tyres, but was only good enough for 13th on the grid.

 

Racing Point’s Sergio Perez qualified 14th and ahead of Haas F1 Team’s Kevin Magnussen who was 15th.

 

The other Toro Rosso of Daniil Kvyat will start at the rear of the grid thanks to the grid penalties for changing to Honda’s latest “Spec 3” turbocharger and internal combustion engine as well as other power-unit components. The Russian however was the quickest of the Q1 eliminatees.

 

He was knocked out by Toro Rosso team-mate Albon in the closing stages of Q1, with the latter not running the latest-spec components.

 

Haas F1 Team’s Romain Grosjean was sent into the Q1 drop zone after improvements from Perez and Ricciardo, with the Frenchman’s attempt to progress into Q2 thwarted by the rear of his Ferrari-powered VF-19 racer stepping out at the chicane and sending him off the track. Thus, Grosjean will start his home Grand Prix in 16th due to the aforementioned Kvyat’s penalty.

 

Racing Point’s Lance Stroll continued his long run of Q1 eliminations with the Canadian taking 18th place having outpaced ROKiT Williams Racing’s George Russell in his final flyer. Stroll will start the Grand Prix in 17th.

 

Russell was hit with two ten-placed grid penalties after the Grove-based squad was forced to change the Mercedes control electronics and energy store in his FW42 racer after a power-loss forced the reigning Formula 2 champion to run just four laps in practice.

 

The Briton qualified in 19th after taking on his third control electronics and energy store for the 2019 campaign, having already changed both during a bizarre man-hole cover strike during practice at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

 

Russell out-qualified Williams team-mate Robert Kubica by 0.416 seconds in the rear-battle but the Pole is promoted to 18th thanks to penalties for his team-mate and Kvyat.

 

The Top Three Qualifiers

 

Pole Position – Lewis Hamilton, #44, Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport, F1 W10 EQ Power+: “It’s not an easy track here and Valtteri’s been quick all weekend, so I’m really happy to have got the potential out of the car. The team has done a fantastic job. I was chipping away and those last two laps were the ones. The wind picked up and it was quite gusty around the track. On that last lap, I was up nearly half a second but I just lost it in the second to last corner, the gust took the back end. But, I was still up on my previous best, which is the main thing. I’m just really happy, we’ve been working really hard and overall, it’s some great teamwork. It’s going to be another hot day tomorrow and the tyres will be a challenge, but I’m excited to see how it will play out.”

 

2nd – Valtteri Bottas, #77, Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport, F1 W10 EQ Power+: “Overall, it’s been a pretty good weekend for me so far, but Lewis put in some really strong laps in Q3 which I was unfortunately unable to match. I couldn’t get the corner combination of Turn 8 and 9 quite right and that’s where I lost one and a half tenths to him in the first run of Q3, otherwise our lap times looked pretty similar. On the second run, I had no tow on the straights which made it almost impossible to improve. It looks like tomorrow will be challenging; the temperatures are forecasted to be very high which will make it tricky for the tyres, so it’s not going to be easy. But it’s close, I feel good and the points will be given out tomorrow.”

 

3rd – Charles Leclerc, #16, Scuderia Ferrari, SF90: “It has been a good weekend so far and I have felt comfortable in the car since FP1. For the past few weeks, my main target has been improving the car set up in order to suit the track evolution from Q1 to Q3. From this point of view, I am satisfied with my personal performance and have definitely made a step forward. On the other hand, we are not where we should be, relative to our competitors in terms of lap times. We have a lot of work to do and I will push to have a good start in order to challenge them during the race tomorrow.”

 

Formula 1 Pirelli Grand Prix De France 2019 Provisional Starting Grid

POS	DRIVER	CAR	TIME	GAP
1	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport	1m28.319s	–
2	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport	1m28.605s	0.286s
3	Charles Leclerc	Scuderia Ferrari	1m28.965s	0.646s
4	Max Verstappen	Aston Martin Red Bull Racing-Honda	1m29.409s	1.090s
5	Lando Norris	McLaren-Renault F1 Team	1m29.418s	1.099s
6	Carlos Sainz Jr.	McLaren-Renault F1 Team	1m29.522s	1.203s
7	Sebastian Vettel	Scuderia Ferrari	1m29.799s	1.480s
8	Daniel Ricciardo	Renault F1 Team	1m29.918s	1.599s
9	Pierre Gasly	Aston Martin Red Bull Racing-Honda	1m30.184s	1.865s
10	Antonio Giovinazzi	Alfa Romeo Racing	1m33.420s	5.101s
11	Alexander Albon	Scuderia Toro Rosso-Honda	1m30.461s	2.142s
12	Kimi Raikkonen	Alfa Romeo Racing	1m30.533s	2.214s
13	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault F1 Team	1m30.544s	2.225s
14	Sergio Perez	SportPesa Racing Point F1 Team	1m30.738s	2.419s
15	Kevin Magnussen	Haas F1 Team	1m31.440s	3.121s
16	Romain Grosjean	Haas F1 Team	1m31.626s	3.307s
17	Lance Stroll	Sport Pesa Racing Point F1 Team	1m31.726s	3.407s
18	George Russell	ROKiT Williams Racing	1m32.789s	4.470s
19	Robert Kubica	ROKiT Williams Racing	1m33.205s	4.886s
20	Daniil Kvyat	Scuderia Toro Rosso-Honda	1m31.564s	3.245s