Hamilton waltzes to easy French GP win

Another 1-2 for Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas

Lewis Hamilton won pole and led all 53 laps to win his 79th F1 race at Paul Ricard over his Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas.

Charles Leclerc finished a close third for Ferrari, far ahead of Max Verstappen's Red Bull.

Sebastian Vettel made a late stop for soft red Pirelli tires and got the 1-point for fastest race lap on the final lap and came home 5th.

Mercedes has now won the last 10 F1 races including the final 2-races of 2018, such is their superiority.

Leclerc's Ferrari team mate Sebastian Vettel could only recover two positions from a poor qualifying session to cross the line fifth but he did secure the fastest lap, and the bonus point that comes with it, on his final lap, having boxed the previous lap for softs.

Max Verstappen finished where he started in fourth, while Carlos Sainz finished an impressive sixth. His McLaren team mate Lando Norris was set for seventh, but a late hydraulics issues meant he slipped into the clutches of Daniel Ricciardo, who forced his way through on the last lap. Norris had to go off track and dropped behind Kimi Raikkonen and Nico Hulkenberg, limping across the line 10th.

However, the final sequence of points-paying positions is subject to change as the stewards confirmed they would investigate the incident between Ricciardo and Norris.

Ricciardo Latest to Receive F1 Screw

Ricciardo the latest to get the F1 screw

The F1 Stewards proved once again they do not want real racing. They want the drivers to parade and not race. His all-action approach made him one of the stars of the French Grand Prix, but Daniel Ricciardo will leave the French Riviera without a single point after the stewards at Circuit Paul Ricard handed him two post-race time penalties, dropping him from P7 to P11.

The Renault driver had an eventful race, recovering the two places he lost at the start to run eighth as the Grand Prix reached its conclusion.

But with McLaren’s Lando Norris slowed by a hydraulics problem ahead, Ricciardo smelt the chance of more points and reeled him in. Though Norris defended P7 valiantly, Ricciardo got a run on the approach the Mistral Chicane and attempted a pass around the outside.

He couldn’t get his Renault stopped in time, though, and ran off track. As he rejoined, Norris had to take avoiding action. The stewards investigated the incident after the race, and deemed he re-joined “unsafely forcing another driver off track". As punishment, they handed him a five-second time penalty and two penalty points on his superlicense.

But that wasn’t the end of the bad news for Ricciardo. Though he had passed Norris, Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen managed to get through. Ricciardo gave chase and re-passed Raikkonen, but did so having crossed the white lines denoting the edge of the track – and the stewards duly handed him another five-second penalty, saying he “left the track and gained a lasting advantage". He also received a further penalty point on his license.

With the extra 10 seconds applied to his race time, Ricciardo drops from seventh down to 11th and out of the points, with Raikkonen, Ricciardo's Renault team mate Nico Hulkenberg and Norris promoted to P7, P8 and P9 respectively. Red Bull’s Pierre Gasly, meanwhile, is promoted into the points in 10th.

It means Renault lose their double points finish in their home race, while Ricciardo fails to score his third consecutive points finish.

Revised Results

Note – Vettel scored an additional point for setting the fastest lap of the race. Ricciardo originally finished seventh, but received a five-second post-race time penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage, plus an identical penalty for failing to rejoin the track safely.

Quotes

Hamilton in control

Lewis Hamilton
I've been racing a long, long time but this just never gets old. It's always a challenge out there and I just love trying to find the edge, and really being on top of this machine. This is actually an awesome track to drive in the race, there's some really technical areas. It may look easy from the outside but it wasn't easy at all, everything's always on the edge. So, when I could, I was saving tires, saving the engine, saving fuel. I had quite big blisters on my front tires which I was a little worried about. But we got to the end and I couldn't do it without this incredible team. I'm so proud of everyone and so proud to be part of this group of people. This has been the best start of the year so we have got to enjoy it.

Valtteri Bottas
It was a fairly quiet race in the end. The start was my best bet, but Lewis also had a good start, so the opportunity wasn't there. Lewis was very quick today; I was trying to keep up, but my front tires were starting to fall into pieces, both on the Mediums and at the end on the Hard tires towards the end as well. We were concerned with the blistering we saw in the last part of the race, so I had to back off a little bit. There was definitely a bit of margin left, but we wanted to be on the safe side and make it to the end. But ultimately, Lewis had the pace advantage today and kept the tires in better shape, so it's something for me to have a look at and learn. I'm really proud of the work we've done as a team, scoring another 1-2 is a great result.

Toto Wolff
In terms of car and driver performance today, that was one of our best of the season. Lewis drove a really good race, he was in complete control at the front and it was a truly faultless performance by him. Valtteri struggled a little in the second stint and he lost a chunk of time under the VSC towards the end, so Charles could get very close in the end. I am really pleased for the team this weekend, it's been a tough few weeks with a lot of long days, but we are relentless and will continue to push. To score another 1-2 finish is an incredible result and a credit to all the hard work and effort of this team. Now, we look to Austria, which is coming home for me. It's a power track there and we have been a bit marginal on cooling. It's meant to be very warm there, so we expect this to be a much harder fight.

Andrew Shovlin
It's been another very good weekend for the team and well done to Lewis on a very strong performance. We looked to have the better car here today but not by a big margin so both drivers were having to work very hard to build any kind of gap. The track was very hot and it made life quite difficult for the tires. We were pushing hard in the first stint to try and build a gap to protect against the undercut. That more or less went to plan and by the stops we had managed to get both cars to the position where they were not really under any threat. We'd not run the hard tire so far this weekend but we seemed to have a good balance on it and once it was up to temperature, it was working nicely. We had a bit of blistering on the front tires of both cars but it was in an area that doesn't have to work hard in the corners so it didn't affect the grip. The least comfortable bit of the race was the last couple of laps with Valtteri when Charles managed to get right onto his gearbox. Valtteri was not close enough to the delta time on the restart and this is what allowed Charles to get close but we need to speak to him to understand what went wrong, we'd told him it would not be a long VSC but maybe we'd not communicated well enough just how brief it was going to be. We also dropped a point with Lewis, we'd not tried hard enough to go for the fastest lap thinking that Sebastian would easily have it, but we should have taken it more seriously. So, bits here and there to improve but well done to the whole team on a great result!

Race Results

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