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La Marseillaise plays on the famous ring track and Lando Norris declares: “Today is a harder day, yesterday was the easy job. The fastest car will be the best balanced.”
Max Verstappen had his say: “Try to manage the tyres, you can be ahead and if you mess up the tyres, they will overtake you.”
Jean Alesi backs Ferrari but seems to have reliability concerns. Flavio Briatore came out and said F1 is better than ever, with Verstappen and Leclerc as the new stars.
Petra gets in touch: “Nick de Vries was asked to drive yesterday in Hamilton’s car. What do you think of his talent? Does Nick have a chance to be the next F1 driver for Mercedes? When Nick was a small child, I met him and his father in his house in a small town in Frisia. He was, and probably still is, the sweetest and most well behaved child I have ever met. And, of course, he was extremely talented at driving at the time!”
Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team boss, spoke about De Vries this weekend.
I think that if we are not able to provide him with an interesting project in Formula 1, in a sense we should let him go. It considers various options, [including] sports cars and then maybe Formula E, but you should never give up on the possibility that one day the door to Formula 1 might open, and today was very, very good.
I can’t really help him because we can’t really tell any team to look at him and consider him because that would feel like interference, and it’s just the opposite.
The pitlane is open, the cars have headed to the grid and are going through their paces until they get there. Mechanics get to work with their final checks. Red Bull’s Helmut Marko looks confident his boy Max Verstappen can handle Charles Leclerc. It’s hot outside and reliability is a problem for Ferrari.
Giles Richards talks to Ferrari mainstay of the past in Jean Alesi.
“Louis is unique,” he says. “When Michael [Schumacher] took seven championships and everyone said, “It’s over for the next 40 years.” Then Lewis arrived. He is truly impressive. When you’re spoiled in terms of results like him, because a good race is P1, a crappy race is P2, that was his life. But now he’s driving a car that jumps on the straights like a kangaroo and to stay motivated to talk to the engineers, to improve the car, it’s… Wow. What a champion.”
Although he only managed one win – a record that doesn’t reflect his talent, especially in the wet – Alesi remembers his career fondly and still loves the sport. The Scuderia were far from their best during his time with them. The 1991 car was unreliable; Alesi has retired nine times this season and team-mate Prost, who had fallen out with Ferrari, was sacked after describing the car as a “truck”.
Lewis Hamilton was unhappy with Mercedes’ performance in Paul Ricard’s qualifying, where it was thought his team could finally catch up with Red Bull and Ferrari.
We were hoping to be much closer than we are. I thought we might be 0.2 seconds off or something. But we are seconds and I have no answer for that.
For some reason it looks like we’re a lot further this weekend, but the whole pack is. The top two teams are in a league of their own, really.
In the last lap, the first sector is just as fast. Then we lose a lot in the straights. At least half a second. And then again through that high-speed section, they have less drag and more downforce in the turns. The last sector was 0.6-0.7s. this is just crazy. For some reason, they manage to go much faster through the high-speed turns.
I came here hoping that we would be within 0.3 seconds and then we could close those two tenths at the next race and be in the fight in Budapest. But if it’s something like that, it’s going to be a while (before we win). But it’s not impossible.
Giles Richards observes a pole position put together in a pragmatic way.
He put in a good lap for Ferrari but was aided by a pull from his teammate, Carlos Sainz, which helped him take pole, beating the Red Bulls of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez into second and third. Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were fourth and sixth – decent enough given their season, but far from the improvement Mercedes had hoped for. The end of their unbeaten run looks as far away as ever.
Sainz finished ninth, but as the team knew he would start from the back row of the grid after getting new powertrain components, they opted to use him tactically in favor of Leclerc.
Preamble
For there to be a title race, we probably need a victory for Charles Leclerc here to repeat his win at the Austrian GP last time out. However, Max Verstappen still has a 38-point lead over the second-placed Monegasque driver and 57 ahead of Sergio Perez and is second on the grid today to Paul Ricard. Leclerc and Verstappen, with all due respect to George Russell, if Mercedes get it right, looks like the rivalry of the future. The problem throughout the season is that the Ferrari may be faster on a lap, but it doesn’t have the reliability and drinking water of the Red Bull, which itself is not completely waterproof. Still, Leclerc driving like a demon evokes memories of Ferrari at their best. Verstappen has already had it harder than last year here when he was in first position, won the race and set the fastest lap. Now, can Leclerc make his title defense more difficult?
Lights out at 2pm, join me.
Grid start positions
- 1 Charles Leclerc – Ferrari
- 2 Max Verstappen – Red Bull
- 3 Sergio Perez – Red Bull
- 4 Lewis Hamilton – Mercedes
- 5 Lando Norris – McLaren
- 6 George Russell – Mercedes
- 7 Fernando Alonso – Alpin
- 8 Yuki Tsunoda – AlphaTauri
- 9 Daniel Ricciardo – McLaren
- 10 Esteban Ocon – Alpine
- 11 Valtteri Bottas – Alfa Romeo
- 12 Sebastian Vettel – Aston Martin
- 13 Alex Alban – Williams
- 14 Pierre Gasly – AlphaTauri
- 15 Lance Stroll – Aston Martin
- 16 Guanyu Zhou – Alfa Romeo
- 17 Mick Schumacher – Haas
- 18 Nicholas Latifi – Williams
- 19 Carlos Sainz – Ferriari
- 20 Kevin Magnussen – Haas
Standings in the Drivers’ Championship
- 1. Max Verstappen – 208 points
- 2. Charles Leclerc – 170 points
- 3. Sergio Perez – 151 points
- 4. Carlos Sainz – 133 points
- 5. George Russell – 128 points
- 6. Lewis Hamilton – 109 points
- 7. Lando Norris – 64 points
- 8. Esteban Ocon – 52 points
- 9. Valtteri Bottas – 46 points
- 10. Fernando Alonso – 29 points
- 11. Kevin Magnussen – 22 points
- 12. Daniel Ricciardo -17 points
- 13. Pierre Gasly – 16 points
- 14. Sebastian Vettel -15 points
- 15. Mick Schumacher – 12 points
- 16. Yuki Tsunoda – 11 points
- 17. Guanyu Zhou – 5 points
- 18. Alex Albon – 3 points
- 19. Lance Stroll – 3 points
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