@Max33Verstappen claims #FrenchGP victory as @CharlesLeclerc retires. #F1

Verstappen French GP victory – Red Bull’s Max Verstappen extended his Driver’s Championship lead with victory at the French GP and ahead of Mercedes’ pairing Sir Lewis Hamilton and George Russell completed the top three with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc retiring from the lead after a shunt giving his title aspirations another blow.

 

 

When the 53 lap French GP began, pole-sitter Leclerc got a great run off the line in-front of Verstappen, who at first looked as though he would have to defend against Hamilton into the opening corner, as the Briton launched straight past Red Bull’s Sergio Perez up ahead and starting third.

 

Verstappen slammed the brakes the latest of the top three runners and ran to the outside of Leclerc, but the Ferrari was under no real pressure on the racing line.

 

As soon as DRS was enabled on lap three, Verstappen, who was already able to catch Leclerc on every straight with his lower-drag, skinnier rear wing fitted to his RB18 racer, really began to pile on the pressure of his title-rival, who appeared to be struggling for rear tyre grip.

 

Verstappen cut the gap to 0.5 seconds at the beginning of the eighth tour as he twice got so close running into La Beausset, he looked to attack the outside of Leclerc.

 

But the Ferrari’s higher downforce, larger rear wing meant Leclerc was able to move away through the technical sequences at the beginning and end of the laps and a tense standstill developed with Verstappen dropping back near the one-second mark over the next few tours.

 

The reigning world champion was now the driver struggling for grip as at one moment he slipped off-track at the sixth corner, so Verstappen picked up his first track limits infringement, and by the 14^th tour, he fell out of DRS assistance as Leclerc began to increase his speed back towards where he was lapping in the early proceedings.

 

Leclerc’s gap was reaching 1.5 seconds when Red Bull pitted Verstappen on the end of lap 16 for a set of C2 white side-walled hard compounds.

 

Ferrari, which told Leclerc it was looking at “Plan B” and that the harder tyre-starting team-mate Carlos Sainz was running down the field after his engine change grid-penalty were still suffering from thermal degradation, did not react to cover Verstappen’s stop.

 

But just after they warned Leclerc to look after his C3 yellow-marked mediums, the Grand Prix was turned upside down when the Monegasque driver shunted at La Beausset, losing the rear of his F1-75 racer in an error whilst running close to the edge of the circuit deep into the high-speed hairpin on is degraded rubber.

 

The Ferrari driver spun around rapidly and went straight on into the barriers, when he yelled “I cannot go on throttle” before screaming after realising that he was out of the race.

 

The incident brought out the safety car, where Hamilton, who saw off Perez’s early threat to run well clear of the Mexican before Leclerc’s shunt, lead a busy visit to the pits.

 

The Briton emerged behind Verstappen and still in-front of Perez, with Russell, Alpine’s Fernando Alonso and the McLaren pairing following in the queue ahead of Ferrari’s Sainz.

 

The Spaniard had come up the field from his 19^th-placed grid slot in the early proceedings but was hit with a five-second timed penalty after his slow safety car pit-stop ended when he was released in the path of Williams Racing’s Alexander Albon who had to slam onto the brakes as the F1-75 entry was released from its box.

 

When the race went green on lap 21, Verstappen pulled clear of Hamilton and was soon in full-control, whilst Hamilton edged away once more from Perez.

 

The main action in the field was Sainz’s recovery charge, as the Ferrari driver jumped past the MCL36 of Daniel Ricciardo at the first corner at the restart and got the other McLaren of Lando Norris into the Mistral Straight chicane further around the tour.

 

On the next lap he got ahead of fellow Spanish-compatriot Alonso and then went off after Russell’s Silver Arrow, who then frustrated the sole Ferrari F1-75’s progress for several tours before the Briton’s defence at the turn eight and nine chicane, meaning Sainz got a better run up the hill to Signes, where he epically got in-front with a pass around the outside.

 

In the lead, Verstappen continued to push away from Hamilton and his gap had hit four seconds by the 32^nd tour, before it rapidly went up to almost seven – mainly thanks to the seven-time world champion having to catch a snap of oversteer through turn two and ran off the circuit.

 

From there Verstappen went on with no trouble to take the French GP victory by 10.587 seconds over Hamilton, who was also not threatened in second place – this was despite a moment of worry for the leaders when Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu came to a halt at the turn six run-off area and deployed the virtual safety car.

 

Their gap out the front was because after the overtake at Signes on Russell, Sainz had closed in on Perez and pushed the Red Bull hard as Ferrari fiddled with the idea of stopping the Spaniard again, knowing that if they did the five-second penalty will be applied before his tyres could be changed.

 

Both team and driver changed their minds on whether to come in or not, but Sainz was still out by the 41^st tour and he was right behind the RB18, attacking Perez at Signes and then remained close enough to jump in-front at the last corner.

 

Ferrari brought Sainz in halfway through their battle, but the Spaniard poured cold-water on the call and pulled clear – having taken Russell along in his wake so the Mercedes was then in a position to attack the grip-less Red Bull of Perez.

 

On the 42^nd tour, Russell made a late move on the inside of the turn eight part of the Mistral Chicane and when Perez turn in, the duo came close to tangling before the Red Bull tripped across turn nine and remained in-front, to Russell’s annoyance but with the stewards rapidly deciding the incident did not warrant an investigation.

 

But immediately after this, Sainz stopped for the second time and came out ninth and with almost 30 seconds to try and recover, as well as re-overtaking Norris and Alonso.

 

Sainz did so rapidly and showed solid pace on his way to posting the Grand Prix’s fastest lap but came home in a frustrated fifth place.

 

This was behind Perez, who lost out to Russell after being caught napping after the Mercedes driver jumped the Mexican when the virtual safety car ended as they approached the last corner and then withstood the pressure over the final three tours to hold third.

 

Sainz wound up 11.5 seconds behind Perez, but comfortably clear of Alonso and Norris, with the other Alpine of Esteban Ocon taking eighth in his home Grand Prix after hitting AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda at the Mistral Straight Chicane on the opening tour and getting slapped with a five-second time penalty he served at his safety car pit-stop for spinning the AT03 around.

 

Ricciardo took ninth place and Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll came home tenth, despite Sebastian Vettel getting very close to snatching the final point position from his team-mate – with the charging AMR22 racer appearing to nearly hit the other when it was slow getting off the last corner’s apex.

 

Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly finished his home race 12^th and in-front of the aforementioned Albon who was 13^th, Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas who settled for 14^th and Haas F1 Team’s Mick Schumacher who brought up the rear.

 

The other non-finishers were Williams Racing’s Nicholas Latifi and Haas F1 Team’s Kevin Magnussen who were forced to retire shortly after they tangled at the second corner in the closing stages, just after the FW44 had attacked the Haas at the preceding opening corner in an incident which is currently under investigation by the stewards.

 

Tsunoda stopped on the same tour as Leclerc’s crash due to floor damage, which he picked up on the opening tour in the clash with Ocon that relegated him to the back of the pack.

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2022 French GP – The Top Three

 

 

2022 French GP Winner – Max Verstappen, #1, Oracle Red Bull Racing-RBPT, RB18:

“I think we had really good pace from the start, but following around here with the heat, I could only go for a move once. We tried to stay calm, stay close. You never know how the race is going to go, but the car was quick today. I hope Charles is okay. I was just looking after the tyres until the end.”

 

2^nd Place – Lewis Hamilton, #44, Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team, F1 W13 E Performance:

“This is the biggest crowd I think we’ve had here, merci beaucoup. That was a tough race, my drinks bottle didn’t work! Reliability is one thing my team has been amazing at, so I need to thank them. Budapest – it’s going to be hard to beat the Ferraris and Red Bulls, they still have a pace advantage. You can see in the race, we can at least lean on them a little bit, so hopefully it’s closer.”

 

3^rd Place – George Russell, #63, Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team, F1 W13 E Performance:

“I’m a bit knackered now, it was a long race, a hard race. I was glad to see the chequered flag. Bringing home P3, two podiums for Mercedes, it’s great.”

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Formula 1 Lenovo Grand Prix De France 2022 Race Results Classification (53 Laps)

POS	NO	DRIVER	CAR	LAPS	TIME/RETIRED	PTS
1	1	Max Verstappen	RED BULL RACING RBPT	53	1:30:02.112	25
2	44	Lewis Hamilton	MERCEDES	53	+10.587s	18
3	63	George Russell	MERCEDES	53	+16.495s	15
4	11	Sergio Perez	RED BULL RACING RBPT	53	+17.310s	12
5	55	Carlos Sainz	FERRARI	53	+28.872s	11
6	14	Fernando Alonso	ALPINE RENAULT	53	+42.879s	8
7	4	Lando Norris	MCLAREN MERCEDES	53	+52.026s	6
8	31	Esteban Ocon	ALPINE RENAULT	53	+56.959s	4
9	3	Daniel Ricciardo	MCLAREN MERCEDES	53	+60.372s	2
10	18	Lance Stroll	ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES	53	+62.549s	1
11	5	Sebastian Vettel	ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES	53	+64.494s	0
12	10	Pierre Gasly	ALPHATAURI RBPT	53	+65.448s	0
13	23	Alexander Albon	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	53	+68.565s	0
14	77	Valtteri Bottas	ALFA ROMEO FERRARI	53	+76.666s	0
15	47	Mick Schumacher	HAAS FERRARI	53	+80.394s	0
16	24	Zhou Guanyu	ALFA ROMEO FERRARI	47	DNF	0
NC	6	Nicholas Latifi	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	40	DNF	0
NC	20	Kevin Magnussen	HAAS FERRARI	37	DNF	0
NC	16	Charles Leclerc	FERRARI	17	DNF	0
NC	22	Yuki Tsunoda	ALPHATAURI RBPT	17	DNF	0

* Provisional results

https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2022/races/1116/france/race-result.html

 

Click here for the 2022 Formula 1 World Driver’s (Top 10) and Constructors Championship Standings.

 

Round 13 of the 2022 FIA Formula One World Championship heads straight to the Hungaroring in Budapest, Hungary for the Formula 1 Aramco Magyar Nagydij 2022 from Friday July 29-Sunday July 31.