Grand Prix 2018 French Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

I know you all know this but the phrase Grand Prix means Great Prize, which is a bit of a clue as to the history of motor racing. The first ever Grand Prix took place in France in 1906. There was a race in the first season of the World Championships in 1950 and apart from 1955 (after the Le Mans tragedy) there was a race in France every year up until 2008.

The French Grand Prix was, is and will continue to be part of the history of F1 and the fact that the powers that run Formula One chose to drop it from the calendar from 2008 was a disgrace and insult to the heritage of the sport. Regardless of the finances, there are certain races which must be on the F1 Calendar and France is one of those. Liberty media would do well to look at the history of the sport and learn what the sport needs not just from a financial perspective but also from an historical one.

Anyway, enough of my ranting France is back. Hooray! The race is taking place at Paul Ricard. Hooray, sort of. Why sort of? Well, Paul Ricard has a history in F1 with the race taking place there at various times in the 70's and 80's, sharing duties with the circuit at Dijon Prenois. But the circuit which was used back then has been heavily revised for safety reasons since the 80's. The old back straight was over a mile long and watching the turbo cars of the 80's blast down this was something to behold. After the death of Elio de Angelis a chicane was put in to the straight and then the circuit was shortened. The bizarre thing is de Angelis' death had little to do with the length of the straight and more to do with the poor emergency support at the practice session.

By the way, we shall have to refer to the circuit as Le Castellet otherwise we are giving free advertising to an alcoholic drink maker who only paid for the track to be built. Not like he deserves any credit is it? Perhaps we should now call it the Circuit Bernie Ecclestone, after the current owner. In fairness to Bernie he has invested a lot of money to improve the facilities to the point where it can host a Grand Prix but then he has a lot of money doesn't he.

So along with the emasculated track comes another strange innovation. There are no gravel traps at Le Castellet, instead there are blue and red stripes painted around the edge of the track which are designed to slow the cars down should they enjoy an excursion off road. These painted run off areas are a mix of asphalt and tungsten and the red sections are deeper than the blue so give more grip to the tyres, slowing the cars down. Having watched a WTCC race it is sometimes difficult to work out where the track runs and, reading some stuff to write this article, found out that the circuit has 167 possible configurations. I wonder if any of the drivers will get lost?

Having just got over the "excitement" of Canada I can't be bothered to get too much into where we are in the 2018 championship. Suffice to say that pole will be either from Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull and the winner will also be from one of these teams. The test will be whether Merc bring their upgraded engine to France and if this will get them closer to Ferrari.

Enjoy one of the historically most important races Formula One could have. I hope it will provide some close action but I have a horrible feeling it will struggle to beat the number of overtakes in Canada. It should be better than Monaco though.
 
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LOL

True.

If they've avoided using a particular straight so they can use DRS then I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the correct locations of the cart and the horse.
 
well the 3rd practice session was ruined by rain so no meaningful running

If it does not dry out for qualifying it could become a lottery and the cars with good downforce would then become more evident
 
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Yea, going to a be an interesting qualifying. Still don't know how Ferrari matches up with the new re-engine Mercedes.
 
Leclerc in the top ten shoot out. He's really piling on the pressure now and showing he's worth a shot at Ferrari I reckon, as if they didn't already know.
 
Vettel might want to seriously push to keep Raikkonen rather than having LeClerc or Ricciardo but I can't see how he can that much sway unless he proves the current Ferrari set up is helping him dominate the drivers championship
 
Does anyone know who, if anyone, will be using the super soft tyres in the race? The commentators on Radio 5 were no help on this. They still get excited about the order of the top six in Q2 when it doesn't matter a damn though.
 
So, yet another 1-2 Mercedes sweep of qualifying, with third-fastest being nearly 1/4 sec behind Bottas. Back to the boring Merc dominance of the last 4 years.:sleeping:
 
Qualifying Results


Saturday Qualifying Session
POS DRIVER NATIONALITY ENTRANT TIME
1. Lewis Hamilton Britain Mercedes 1:30.029
2. Valtteri Bottas Finland Mercedes 1:30.147
3. Sebastian Vettel Germany Ferrari 1:30.400
4. Max Verstappen Netherlands Red Bull Racing TAG Heuer 1:30.705
5. Daniel Ricciardo Autralia Red Bull Racing TAG Heuer 1:30.895
6. Kimi Raikkonen Finland Ferrari 1:31.057
7. Carlos Sainz Spain Renault 1:32.126
8. Charles Leclerc Monaco Sauber-Ferrari 1:32.635
9. Kevin Magnussen Denmark Haas-Ferrari 1:32.930
10. Romain Grosjean France Haas-Ferrari No Time
11. Esteban Ocon France Force India-Mercedes 1:32.075
12. Nico Hulkenberg Germany Renault 1:32.115
13. Sergio Perez Mexico Force India-Mercedes 1:32.454
14. Pierre Gasly France Scuderia Toro Rosso Honda 1:32.460
15. Marcus Ericsson Sweden Sauber-Ferrari 1:32.820
16. Fernando Alonso Spain McLaren-Renault 1:32.976
17. Brendon Hartley New Zealand Scuderia Toro Rosso Honda 1:33.025
18. Stoffel Vandoorne Belgium McLaren-Renault 1:33.162
19. Sergey Sirotkin Russia Williams-Mercedes 1:33.636
20. Lance Stroll Canada Williams-Mercedes 1:33.729
 
If anything Ferrari should be leading the championship both by a mile if they have not cocked things up and most of the time screwing Raikkonen's races

Ferrari will falter which is what Hamilton expects and I do too since they lost one of their engineers moving to Sauber. I still think like last year Mercedes took a while to get going and when they did they had the best car. So I am expecting James Allison and his team to have worked things through as the season progresses

Red Bull in fairness they are further behind than they ought to be largely down to Verstappen's mistakes
 
A few comments:

1. Ferrari never seemed close to challenging the Mercedes. It is clear with the new engine, that Mercedes has the power advantage. This has happened a couple of times in the past seasons, where people look competitive to Mercedes at the start of the season, and then Mercedes introduces a raft a changes around the half-way point and pull ahead. Is this what we are looking at now?
2. Of course, this is qualifying, things may be different during the race (that is what Alonso said).
3. Verstappen outqualified Ricciardo (5 to 3 for the season).
4. Kimi only qualified two positions higher than his rumored replacements. It is now demoralized and just going through the motions?
5. Hulkenburg for a change was not 7th.
6. Poor Grosjean.
7. The Williams looks completely hopeful. Not sure why they could be that bad on this circuit.
 
Does anyone know who, if anyone, will be using the super soft tyres in the race? The commentators on Radio 5 were no help on this. They still get excited about the order of the top six in Q2 when it doesn't matter a damn though.
I was watching Sky (via ESPN). I gather both Mercedes and Verstappen set their fastest times in the 2nd qualifying session on Supersofts. The commentators were discussing whether Ricciardo was on supersoft or not.
 
the two legends of the sport failing to get out of Q1 - Williams and MClaren:teary::embarrassed: this is sad to see in F1
I am mystified by this. You would think that they would have had an advantage at Paul Ricard. With all the straights and the cars being at full power 70% of the time, isn't this a track where the aero is not as critical? I was surprised they did not do better or that Red Bull was as good as it was.
 
Amazing what a new engine will do not 1 that has done 1500 - 1800 miles. But we all knew a mercedes engine car would help in this high speed track. But it was still quality pole lap they just seemed to have more confidence in the car to push than ferraris. Surprise force india didnt do as well as i expected 11th - 13th assume 1 with low drag car would be in Q3. What a lap in Q2 from Leclerc thrashing his teammate again, by 7 tenths. & 8th on the grid the quickest non works ferrari. But i was predicting all this back when sauber hired him. When i was gushing in my praise. The way this is going he might be too successful for vettels liking in 2019

From the sublime to the ridiculous Yeah alonso back to earth with a bump. LM24 win to out in Q1. Its just yet another low in recent history of mclaren. As its turning out honda poor reliability didnt help, but mclaren high drag/ inefficient car was reason for low top speed not honda & i just can just zak brown about to make some wholesale changes & peter prodrumu who came with a big fanfare will be getting a rocket up the backside soon if not already
:spank:
 
Williams - the car with the best engine has poor aerodynamics is terrible at cornering speed - they basically got all the windtunnel results wrong and it is taken them a while to sort the car

the driver pairing is not helping either - I predicted that having Stroll in the team with his money is not working because all the experience they lose out plus the money lost from the constructors is sending them down the wrong end of the pitlane. I was predicting 9th in the constructors when the season started. I have to say Williams are going to finish last in the constructors given the improvements both Toro Rosso and Sauber :embarrassed: The problems are exacerbated further by the loss of their major sponsor so they are on the brink of folding unless some serious investment comes in. They missed out on teaming with Honda when there was an opportunity . There is no quick fix for them. Becoming a Mercedes B team is an insult to what they have achieved
 
Mclaren - they can survive longer than Williams but they have been caught napping in the hybrid era and feeling the pain of getting it all wrong with Honda.

Is it irony that instead of blaming Honda , Zak Brown and Eric Bouillier are covering their backs and trying to find scapegoats within the team. Since they sacked Tim Goss, Mclaren have actually gone backwards so the rumours of revolt can't be wrong if results are getting worse on the track

At Paul Ricard there are some points on the circuit were its a bit like Montreal, long straights and heavy braking for slow corners so it appears to be is the car actually got too much drag.

They are getting slower than Sauber which is astonishing and that is a Ferrari B team but some of it must come down to management seeing Frederic Vasseur has been in the role shorter than Eric Boullier in his and has done a fantastic job turning the team around
 
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...At Paul Ricard there are some points on the circuit were its a bit like Montreal, long straights and heavy braking for slow corners so it appears to be is the car actually got too much drag...

Well, I don't understand all the ins and out of modern aerodynamics....but that seems like something you could easily correct.
 
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