Hamilton can regain points lead as Mercedes hit the sweet spot

Paul Ricard was expected to closely reflect the Circuit de Catalunya in terms of how competitive the teams would be. And for the most part that was turned out to be the case.

In fact the top three on the grid are the same: Lewis Hamilton edged his team mate to pole position by a slender margin, while Sebastian Vettel is a tenth of a second further behind in his Ferrari. If Kimi Raikkonen hadn’t made a porridge of Q3 for the umpteenth time we’d surely be looking at the same top six as he had for the Spanish Grand Prix.

In Barcelona Sebastian Vettel was unable to keep pace with Mercedes on a one-stop strategy and had to make a second visit to the pits which ruined his race. He is optimistic that won’t recur on Sunday.

“The track’s not easy on tyres but we saw [on Friday] that we had pretty good long runs and no problems with the tyres,” he said.

However the Ferrari pair are at a strategic disadvantage compared to Mercedes and Red Bull in that they will start on the ultra-soft tyres rather than the harder super-softs. “Obviously we also start on a different set so I don’t wish for an extra stop, compared to the others.”

“The pit lane is quite long here” he added, referring to the fact stops will take longer as the speed limit in the pits has been reduced to 60kph.

As usual Vettel has gone from being well off the pace on Friday to fighting for pole position on Saturday. He credited the team’s simulator drivers for their assistance during practice.

“Car-wise, I know we didn’t change too much but for sure the things that we changed, they helped. Not dramatic, this I can tell you – but it was good to have the support from the factory. They were obviously looking into it, trying to get everything out for qualifying, and for the set-up, mainly.

“I think we were relying on the help from the simulator. Antonio Giovinazzi and, yesterday, Daniil Kvyat was here and helping us, so those two, thanks to them as well.”

From his third pole position of the season Hamilton has a clear shot at victory, and regaining the championship lead. But Bottas has been quick this weekend, seems not to have been affected by missing much of second and third practice, and he’s been threatening to win a race all year.

For Vettel, his best hope is that his ultra-soft tyres and Ferrari’s potent power unit will allow him to muscle ahead of at least one Mercedes at the start. Expect a lively beginning to the race as drivers vie for position on an unfamiliar track in the expectation that overtaking will be difficult.

They also have generous expanses of run-off to play with. As was clear from today’s F2 race, drivers can run a long way off-track for a long time and rejoin without losing any positions.

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Do Red Bull have a chance to take the fight to Mercedes? Daniel Ricciardo suspects they can only think about taking on the Ferraris – or at least one of them.

“With Kimi it should be [possible], I’ve got to keep him behind. With Seb it depends how the ultra-soft is. If the ultra-soft struggles it could put us in a fight with the Ferrari. If not, if Seb stays in front at the start, it’s going to be difficult for us to have his pace with the same tyre towards the end of the race.”

Unusually the Red Bull pair have opted for slightly different downforce levels. Max Verstappen’s lower wing level should work better in a dry race whereas Ricciardo stands to benefit from rain. Dry but cooler conditions are expected for the race – not what Ricciardo wants to hear.

Haas comfortably led the midfield in Spain and would have here but for Romain Grosjean’s crash and Kevin Magnussen being blocked by Kimi Raikkonen. Watch for their cars attacking Carlos Sainz Jnr and the impressive Charles Leclerc for ‘best of the rest’ honours.

However McLaren have slipped backwards to a surprising extent in the three races since Spain to become the second-slowest team on the grid. They believe they know what they are looking for, but whether they can fix it quickly enough to salvage their season is the pressing question. As this is the first of five races within six weeks, the pressure is on to find a solution.

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Qualifying times in full

	Driver	Car	Q1	Q2 (vs Q1)	Q3 (vs Q2)
1	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1’31.271	1’30.645 (-0.626)	1’30.029 (-0.616)
2	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	1’31.776	1’31.227 (-0.549)	1’30.147 (-1.080)
3	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1’31.820	1’30.751 (-1.069)	1’30.400 (-0.351)
4	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	1’31.531	1’30.818 (-0.713)	1’30.705 (-0.113)
5	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1’31.910	1’31.538 (-0.372)	1’30.895 (-0.643)
6	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1’31.567	1’30.772 (-0.795)	1’31.057 (+0.285)
7	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Renault	1’32.394	1’32.016 (-0.378)	1’32.126 (+0.110)
8	Charles Leclerc	Sauber	1’32.538	1’32.055 (-0.483)	1’32.635 (+0.580)
9	Kevin Magnussen	Haas	1’32.169	1’31.510 (-0.659)	1’32.930 (+1.420)
10	Romain Grosjean	Haas	1’32.083	1’31.472 (-0.611)
11	Esteban Ocon	Force India	1’32.786	1’32.075 (-0.711)
12	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault	1’32.949	1’32.115 (-0.834)
13	Sergio Perez	Force India	1’32.692	1’32.454 (-0.238)
14	Pierre Gasly	Toro Rosso	1’32.447	1’32.460 (+0.013)
15	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1’32.804	1’32.820 (+0.016)
16	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1’32.976
17	Brendon Hartley	Toro Rosso	1’33.025
18	Stoffel Vandoorne	McLaren	1’33.162
19	Sergey Sirotkin	Williams	1’33.636
20	Lance Stroll	Williams	1’33.729

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Over to you

Is this race Mercedes’ to lose? Will Ferrari or Red Bull be their biggest threat?

Share your views on the French Grand Prix in the comments.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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