2018 French Grand Prix interactive data: lap charts, times and tyres

2018 French Grand Prix

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While Lewis Hamilton romped to a decisive French Grand Prix win which restored him to the head of the points tables, the two drivers who started closest to him had to climb back to the the front after their first-lap collision.

Despite a five-second penalty for hitting Valtteri Bottas at the first corner, Sebastian Vettel made it to a damage-limiting fifth place. Bottas, who was compromised more seriously by the contact, ended up seventh.

As was widely expected, one-stop strategies were favoured throughout the field, and drivers were able to use which combination of ultra-soft, super-soft and soft tyres suited them best. Sergey Sirotkin did almost the entire race distance on a single set of soft tyres.

Ferrari performed the quickest pit stop of the race for Kimi Raikkonen. He left his pit stop late, emerging on a fresher set of tyres than his rivals, which allowed him to successfully pass Daniel Ricciardo for third place.

However Vettel’s two visits two the pits were the slowest of the race – one of these was because he had to serve a five-second penalty for the Bottas collision.

Bottas set the fastest lap of the race for Mercedes, though Max Verstappen was just five-hundredths of a second away from setting another fastest lap for Red Bull.

Explore the French Grand Prix in greater detail with the interactive graphs and tables below.

2018 French Grand Prix lap chart

The positions of each driver on every lap. Click name to highlight, right-click to reset. Toggle drivers using controls below:

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2018 French Grand Prix race chart

The gaps between each driver on every lap compared to the leader’s average lap time. Very large gaps omitted. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan and right-click to reset. Toggle drivers using controls below:

2018 French Grand Prix lap times

All the lap times by the drivers (in seconds, very slow laps excluded). Scroll to zoom, drag to pan and toggle drivers using the control below:

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2018 French Grand Prix fastest laps

Each driver’s fastest lap:

Rank Driver Car Fastest lap Gap On lap
1 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 1’34.225 41
2 Max Verstappen Red Bull-TAG Heuer 1’34.275 0.050 47
3 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 1’34.398 0.173 48
4 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1’34.485 0.260 42
5 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1’34.509 0.284 49
6 Fernando Alonso McLaren-Renault 1’35.133 0.908 48
7 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull-TAG Heuer 1’35.382 1.157 37
8 Kevin Magnussen Haas-Ferrari 1’35.425 1.200 50
9 Carlos Sainz Jnr Renault 1’35.638 1.413 46
10 Romain Grosjean Haas-Ferrari 1’35.695 1.470 47
11 Nico Hulkenberg Renault 1’35.873 1.648 46
12 Charles Leclerc Sauber-Ferrari 1’35.977 1.752 45
13 Marcus Ericsson Sauber-Ferrari 1’36.494 2.269 37
14 Stoffel Vandoorne McLaren-Renault 1’36.675 2.450 48
15 Brendon Hartley Toro Rosso-Honda 1’36.839 2.614 40
16 Sergey Sirotkin Williams-Mercedes 1’38.300 4.075 35
17 Sergio Perez Force India-Mercedes 1’38.319 4.094 25
18 Lance Stroll Williams-Mercedes 1’38.319 4.094 35
19 Esteban Ocon Force India-Mercedes
20 Pierre Gasly Toro Rosso-Honda

2018 French Grand Prix tyre strategies

The tyre strategies for each driver:

Stint 1 Stint 2 Stint 3
Esteban Ocon
Pierre Gasly
Sergio Perez Soft (27)
Lance Stroll Ultra soft (1) Soft (47)
Fernando Alonso Super soft (1) Soft (45) Ultra soft (4)
Lewis Hamilton Super soft (33) Soft (20)
Max Verstappen Super soft (25) Soft (28)
Romain Grosjean Ultra soft (34) Super soft (18)
Kimi Raikkonen Ultra soft (34) Super soft (19)
Stoffel Vandoorne Super soft (40) Ultra soft (12)
Daniel Ricciardo Super soft (28) Soft (25)
Marcus Ericsson Super soft (35) Ultra soft (17)
Brendon Hartley Ultra soft (38) Super soft (14)
Sergey Sirotkin Ultra soft (1) Soft (51)
Sebastian Vettel Ultra soft (1) Soft (39) Ultra soft (13)
Kevin Magnussen Ultra soft (28) Soft (25)
Valtteri Bottas Super soft (1) Soft (38) Super soft (14)
Carlos Sainz Jnr Ultra soft (26) Soft (27)
Nico Hulkenberg Soft (37) Ultra soft (16)
Charles Leclerc Ultra soft (31) Super soft (22)

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2018 French Grand Prix pit stop times

How long each driver’s pit stops took:

Driver Team Pit stop time Gap On lap
1 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 24.289 34
2 Marcus Ericsson Sauber 24.295 0.006 35
3 Brendon Hartley Toro Rosso 24.297 0.008 38
4 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull 24.309 0.020 28
5 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 24.310 0.021 33
6 Max Verstappen Red Bull 24.395 0.106 25
7 Stoffel Vandoorne McLaren 24.399 0.110 40
8 Fernando Alonso McLaren 24.788 0.499 46
9 Nico Hulkenberg Renault 25.016 0.727 37
10 Charles Leclerc Sauber 25.026 0.737 31
11 Kevin Magnussen Haas 25.419 1.130 28
12 Carlos Sainz Jnr Renault 25.423 1.134 26
13 Fernando Alonso McLaren 25.789 1.500 1
14 Sergey Sirotkin Williams 26.273 1.984 1
15 Lance Stroll Williams 26.576 2.287 1
16 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 27.955 3.666 1
17 Romain Grosjean Haas 29.996 5.707 34
18 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 30.666 6.377 39
19 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 31.029 6.740 40
20 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 32.612 8.323 1

2018 French Grand Prix

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Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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16 comments on “2018 French Grand Prix interactive data: lap charts, times and tyres”

  1. What happened to Dan’s pace towards the end of the race? Did he have issues again?

    1. @homerlovesbeer As someone reminded me in another thread, Ricciardo hit debris and damaged his front wing, losing a lot of downforce.

      1. Yes but in his interview RIC said he hit debris 2 laps before his pit stop. (on lap 28) This doesn’t make sense looking at the lap times, as they drop after lap 40. Why is he lying about this?

        1. His lap times started to fade just before his stop as his front wing got damaged. After the stop his front wing got damaged even further and then he was stuck in traffic, which cost him a lot of time.

          1. Meanwhile I have seen pictures of Daniels pit stop, and the wing was indeed damaged there. I can imagine further damage by vibration after that. Lap times after the stop where pretty decent in my opinion though. Guess they started dropping after the wing got further damage.

    2. @homerlovesbeer, as others have noted, after the upper cascades on both the left and right side of his front wing came off (officially due to debris, but the fact that the same piece fell off on both sides of his front wing doesn’t really match with the “debris” claim), he was suffering from severe understeer.

      Given that Paul Ricard is said to be a front limited circuit, having a heavily understeering car would be particularly problematic here, hence why his lap times worsened towards the latter stages of the race.

  2. Once again, I can’t help but think scrapping the mandatory stops and having a car try and get to the end without pitting would be an interesting addition with these tyres.

    1. Yes, that would make the races more interesting I think.

  3. The saddest thing here is that McLaren intentionally pitted Alonso right at the end of the race to give him his best shot of getting fastest lap…. and they’re still 0.9 seconds off what the others can do on older tyres.

    1. And the suspension broke!

    2. Why sad. They voted for this. They voted to go for Renault and are paying 25 mn per year for that.
      I will start feeling for them only once the ineffective top brass of Eric, Jonathan and Zak is removed.

      1. Thunder (@thunder1115)
        25th June 2018, 6:56

        Now they know how bad their car.

    3. Not so sure things are like that. The last laps were under VSC and double yellow flags, so nobody could push to the max. By the time he got the tyres into temp and rhythm, he couldn’t push anymore. VET tried to get the FL but had to slow down because of the same reasons.

    4. But Alonso never got rally the chance to go for it because of Stroll and his puncture.
      I’m not saying he would have managed the fastest lap, that McLaren is not the quickest one, but Alonso could have been really close to it.

    5. Miguel Bento
      25th June 2018, 8:38

      GP2 Chassis! GP2 Chassis!!

  4. Behind the big three teams, the pack is incredibly close. Shame that it’s only a fight for 7th or 6th maximum otherwise it would be a thrilling championship.

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