In Pictures: France 2021
Third consecutive win of the season for the Red Bull Team in which Max Verstappen required 1:27:25.770 to win a thrilling French Grand Prix! Securing a hat-trick (pole position, race win and fastest lap) for the first time in his F1 career.
The weekend started with the usual sandbagging from most teams, especially those at the front of the grid.
On Saturday, qualifying saw a reinvigorated Lewis Hamilton finding some last-minute speed to classify him second on the grid, behind a very happy Max Verstappen on pole for Sunday's race at Le Castellet.
The race started with a very determined Lewis Hamilton passing Max Verstappen for the lead when the later had a snap of oversteer into turn one, forcing to dive off the track into the run-off and rejoining in second.
On lap 17, Mercedes brought Bottas in for new tires, a lap later, Verstappen was called into the pits. Hamilton a lap later. Verstappen's out-lap was so fast that by the time Hamilton's Mercedes exited the pits, Verstappen flashed past. The undercut has worked beautifully for the Austrian team.
The drivers were having a hard time keeping their cars on track with fast degrading tires, so on lap 32 Red Bull decided to bring Verstappen in for a new set of mediums (yellow), coming out in fourth, behind teammate Perez and several seconds from then leader Hamilton. He passed Perez rather quickly and on lap 44, Verstappen made his move on Bottas for second. Bottas angrily shouted on the radio: “Why the @#$%& did no one listen to me when I said it would be a two-stop...”
Then on lap 52, Verstappen passed Hamilton at the end of the Mistral Straight going into turn 8. Verstappen’s race engineer GianPiero Lambiase, in a very calm voice said: "Simply lovely" to his driver.
In the end, Verstappen took the win as well as the extra point for fastest lap and is leading the Drivers' Championship by 12 points going to the first of two home races for the team at the Red Bull Ring in Austria. Hamilton finished second and Perez third.
““Winning this race was an amazing Team effort and to have a double podium at a track like this really shows the hard work everyone is putting in here and in Milton Keynes at our factory and Honda’s. Of course I would have liked to pull off into the distance and cruise ahead on my own but it doesn’t often work like that in Formula One and we really had to work for it today.
It was certainly not an easy race and I got caught out at Turn 1 and lost the rear which meant I had to go off the track and lost a position to Lewis. I was of course upset at the time but I knew there was a long race ahead and I had to focus. In the first stint I didn’t really have the pace to fight with Lewis so we took the risk to pit first and to be honest I didn’t expect the undercut to work so well that I would come out ahead.
We should all enjoy this for a few days until we get to Austria and start again.””
““Congratulations to Max, he did a great job today. The Red Bulls had better straight-line speed all weekend but considering that we had such a difficult Friday, I’m really happy with this result. Of course, we didn’t win and we had the lead but I had no tires left at the end so unfortunately we lost the position, but it was still a good race.””
““The Team did a fantastic job today with great strategy and making the right calls at the right time so well done to everyone here and back at the factory. It’s a great result for them which is what really counts and so I’m happy with that. On my side, this weekend wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be, as drivers we only want to win so I just have to keep working hard, continue improving and getting better results with the great car that I’ve been given. Back-to-back podiums is still solid points but I just needed probably three more laps to get past Lewis for the 1-2 finish, so we’ll keep pushing to get it at our home race in Austria.””
Selected photos from the Circuit Paul Ricard at Le Castellet, France:
