Verstappen extends lead as Leclerc falters
Mercedes’ Hamilton and Russell on podium together for first time this season but Sainz best performer
As the F1 season surpasses the halfway point, it is clear that, if Ferrari is going to wrestle the Constructors’ title away from Red Bull, and the driver’s championship from leader Max Verstappen, it will have to do much better than it did at the French Grand Prix.
Despite being the pole-sitter and leading for the first third of the race at the Paul Ricard circuit in Le Castellet, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc literally threw away a possible race victory, and maybe his title hopes, by crashing out of the race. His teammate, Carlos Sainz, drove well enough to have potentially won the race, but his problems started before the race began.
Due to an engine change, he was forced to start from the rear of the grid alongside Haas driver Kevin Magnussen, who was starting there for the same reason. Sainz eventually finished fifth, in what was the drive of the race, underlining the pace the Ferrari has, but also the team’s reliability issues.
With Leclerc scoring an own goal, his demise paved the way for not just Verstappen’s seventh victory of the season, but also enabled Lewis Hamilton, in his 300th F1 start, and his Mercedes teammate George Russell, to be on the podium together for the first time this season.
That, despite Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff lamenting the performance of his team’s car when compared to Ferrari and Red Bull, both of whom are at least generally half a second quicker.
For Verstappen, this was his 27th F1 victory, equalling the total Sir Jackie Stewart amassed in his career, during which the canny Scotsman became the pioneer for improved safety in F1, and garnered him three world titles.
Stewart had witnessed the death of almost half the drivers he raced against but, thankfully, safety in F1 is now at an all–time high standard.
In Stewart’s day, the crash that Leclerc had may have at least injured him, as barriers were very superficial in the 60s and 70s. But Leclerc dented his pride as much as his car, with Verstappen’s win meaning he leads Leclerc by 63 points in the championship, with Sergio Perez, who was 4th for Red Bull in the race, 70 points behind his team leader.
Irrespective of his seemingly handsome lead, Verstappen is not yet thinking about becoming a double world champion.
“A lot of things can happen so I don’t really look at that lead,” he told Sky Sports F1. He pointed out that Hungary, which is on this weekend, before F1 takes a summer break, is a circuit that
hasn’t been kind to Red Bull, and so when asked if his points buffer made him smile, his response was somewhat guarded.
“No, because we still have a lot of work to do. We are still behind over one lap. And I don’t expect Hungary to be particularly our best track because I do think we are lacking a bit of down-force compared to Ferrari.
“And so, we’ll face a few tough weekends as well.”
He was asked if he would have been able to overtake Leclerc if the latter had continued, and said he wasn’t sure, but he was trying to put pressure on him.
“Tried to stay close because we pitted a bit earlier. And from there onwards, you never know how the race is going to go. But the car was quick today and, of course, unlucky for Charles. I hope he’s okay, and from there onwards, I just did my race, looked after the tyres.”
Asked about Leclerc’s mistake in crashing out of the lead, Verstappen sounded sympathetic.
“I mean, these mistakes are
easily made. So yeah, I don’t know.”
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was asked by Sky F1‘s Ted Kravitz if Leclerc might now be labelled a “crasher”, a question probably more fit for Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotti to answer.
“I don’t think so,” Horner bluntly responded. “I don’t know whether anything else contributed to his accident. He’s a very strong driver.
“I mean, these two guys, they are operating and pushing each other so hard. And these cars are right on the edge in these conditions. His bad luck today was our good luck and it’s swung around during the course of the year.”
Leclerc though was not making any excuses for his mistake.
“I’m driving at the highest level in my career, but if I keep doing those mistakes, then it’s pointless to perform at a very high level,” Leclerc stated.
“I’m losing too many points, I mean, seven I think in Imola, 25 here because honestly, we probably were the strongest car on track today.
“So yeah, if we lose the championship by 32 points at the end of the season, I will know where they’re coming from. And it’s unacceptable. I just need to get on top of those things. The snap was a bit of a weird one. So look into the data, try to understand if there’s nothing that I don’t know yet, but to me it’s a mistake.”
Former Mercedes driver and 2016 world champion Nico Rosberg was highly critical of Ferrari’s strategy irrespective of Leclerc’s mistake.
“I was shaking my head, like, ‘what on earth are they doing there?’ ”
What he was eluding to was Ferrari bringing Sainz in when he was challenging for a podium position, despite starting from the rear of the grid.
“First of all he was in the middle of a huge battle out on track and his whole team wasn’t watching that anymore, they had their heads down doing their calculations about pit-stop times and they were talking to him in the middle of the wheel-to-wheel action there.”
Sainz had wanted to stay out, but the team brought him in.
“Really, I think its time they made some changes there, some serious changes.”
Whilst Ferrari had those issues, everything went pretty well for the Mercedes duo. Hamilton was able to maintain a good pace, and while not able to attack Verstappen, he was comfortably second after Leclerc crashed. Russell was able to dive-bomb Perez after a virtual safety-car period ended, catching the Mexican asleep a little it seemed, to snatch the third podium position.
“I couldn’t really be much happier,” Hamilton said in the post-race press conference.
“Of course, if we’d won that would be another step but definitely didn’t expect that result today. Obviously, I was praying and hoping that we could fight for a podium, like a third, but I can’t believe we have a second - this is huge for us. Obviously unfortunate for Charles, but we’ve done a great job with reliability as a team.”
“I feel fantastic, I was a little bit dehydrated! The drinks bottle didn’t work in the race. I don’t actually ever drink in the race ever, so this was the first time I actually tried it all year and there was nothing coming out.”
Given he doesn’t drink during a race, you have to wonder why Hamilton felt it necessary to even raise the issue. Wolff was pleased with the result but not getting carried away.
“Delighted would be to win,” he told Sky Sports F1. “But we need to stay humble with our guys just not good at the moment to fight with the guys in front. I’m always a little bit pessimistic because I think I need to be.
“We’re just lacking six or seven tenths to the leaders and whilst we have stabilised in the race and Verstappen hasn’t been really gaining more ground, he was also looking after his tyres. So overall the I think the team effort was great.”
Fernando Alonso in the Alpine finished 6th to be best of the rest, and also surpassed Kimi Raikkonen’s record of 18, 621 laps completed in F1. And, to the delight of the race fans, his French teammate Esteban Ocon was 8th, with Alpine taking points off McLaren in the Constructors’ race.
But after 12 races, Verstappen the defending world champion now has, thanks to Ferrari mistakes and reliability issues, a firm grip on his title defence.
The downcast look on Leclerc’s face after another crucial mistake, said it all, and he will have to make amends in Hungary this weekend, otherwise the championships are slipping away for Ferrari.
Leclerc, and to a lessor extent, Sainz have been Verstappen’s chief rivals, and although Hamilton may be too far back to be a title contender, he is emerging as the driver who could hassle Verstappen in the second half of the season.
This was the 50th time Verstappen and Hamilton have been on the podium together, and this latest result suggests their rivalry will likely continue for some time, but with seven wins, it is clearly the young Dutchman’s championship to lose, and on his form in France, that seems unlikely.