Start, Paul Ricard, 2019

Vote for your 2019 French Grand Prix Driver of the Weekend

2019 French Grand Prix

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Which Formula One driver made the most of the French Grand Prix weekend?

It’s time to give your verdict on which driver did the best with the equipment at their disposal over the last five days.

Review how each driver got on below and vote for who impressed you the most at Paul Ricard.

Driver performance summary

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Vote for your driver of the weekend

Which driver do you think did the best job throughout the race weekend?

Who got the most out of their car in qualifying and the race? Who put their team mate in the shade?

Cast your vote below and explain why you chose the driver you picked in the comments.

Who was the best driver of the 2019 French Grand Prix weekend?

  • No opinion (0%)
  • Robert Kubica (1%)
  • George Russell (0%)
  • Alexander Albon (0%)
  • Daniil Kvyat (0%)
  • Antonio Giovinazzi (0%)
  • Kimi Raikkonen (6%)
  • Lance Stroll (1%)
  • Sergio Perez (0%)
  • Lando Norris (40%)
  • Carlos Sainz Jnr (9%)
  • Kevin Magnussen (0%)
  • Romain Grosjean (0%)
  • Nico Hulkenberg (0%)
  • Daniel Ricciardo (3%)
  • Pierre Gasly (0%)
  • Max Verstappen (2%)
  • Charles Leclerc (5%)
  • Sebastian Vettel (1%)
  • Valtteri Bottas (0%)
  • Lewis Hamilton (34%)

Total Voters: 192

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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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36 comments on “Vote for your 2019 French Grand Prix Driver of the Weekend”

  1. Evenly split 1:1 between Hamilton and Norris (my vote) when I cast it :-)

  2. DOTW: Lewis Hamilton with an honorable mention to Lando Norris.
    DOTD: The latter.

  3. Hard to select none impressed me I will go for Lewis for doing his job very well!

  4. Hamilton, Norris, Leclerc.

    1. My top 3 as well.

      If Norris didn’t drop positions at the start, he would have been the DOTW in my books.

      1. I can’t understand the race day love for Lando if I’m honest. He was mega in qualifying but his race was ordinary. He lost places at the start as you say and when he was told he couldn’t use DRS he was already behind Sainz, so he can’t argue that was the reason for him finishing behind his team mate. So I can’t see why he won the FOM DotD or why anyone would say he was DOTW.

  5. Kimi, because why not?

    1. He got outqualified by Giovinazzi..

  6. Norris was behind his teammate even without his issues.

    Hamilton dominated the weekend, he only didn’t get the fastest lap because of the silly point they award tempting Vettel on to new tyres.

    1. That may be, and is a fair point, but how Norris handled those problems (seemingly) without complaining, and just keeping maximum focus on what must have been an insanely hard car to drive, was just too admirable not to give him the nod.

      That he lost three places from a bit of an evil move from Ricciardo after fighting and keeping it going for so long, just adds to that

      1. without the problems, he lost his position in first 100 meters , with his team mate, with same car, cant be DOTD, to many englishmen voting in an english dominated sport, very unfair, best was kimi.

        1. What makes you think I’m English? I most certainly am not.

    2. “Hamilton dominated the weekend, he only didn’t get the fastest lap (..)” – Yeah, he very much dominated. But how come? Could it be that his team/car had anything to do with it? He was a mere 0.02s slower than VET on brand new softs while he himself was on half race distance old hards. And he claims he could’ve went a full sec faster. That’s domination alright, MERC-domination.
      @philipgb

  7. Kubica and Norris.

  8. Honest question: why is people giving credit to Norris, and not Sainz that made a nice overtake on lap 1 and managed tires through out the entire race to finish in 6th position? The team even gave Norris the chance to perform an undercut when Sainz was ahead, although that backfired with the slow 3.3s pit and rejoining behind another car slow car. Sainz appears to have been told to maintain certain speed, and when asked to go faster to protect from Kviat (IIRC), it matched perfectly Kviat’s lap times in order to allow Norris move out of danger of being overtaken by Kviat.
    Norris complaining that Sainz is slow is pointless when the gap was usually around from 1.5-2s, and Sainz was just keeping tires fresh so they don’t fall the cliff by the end of the races, as it did on the last one.

    1. Norris had a broken car.

      1. Oh no! Let’s all vote for Lando always until the end of times! Because, OMG, he had a trouble with the car today!!!

        How on Earth does a problem with the car make a driver more “deserving” to be named Driver of the Day?!?!?

    2. petebaldwin (@)
      23rd June 2019, 17:56

      What country is Lando from?

      1. Do they speak English in What?
        @petebaldwin

    3. When drivers suffer some adversity, for some reason voters feel obliged to vote for them “just because they feel it makes some justice”.
      Despite it making no sense, not helping anyone, and actually being undeserved.

      I lost all interest and respect to such polls after Albon’s Chinese adventures.

  9. Hamilton, Norris and Max. Haven’t decided yet which of these.

    BTW, it’s interesting how no one is impressed with Max anymore now that he has a bad team mate instead of Ricciardo, even though he seems to be driving very well this year.

    1. Maybe because coming 4th in the 3rd best car is not earth-shattering……and maybe, Max, is underperforming giving how close the Mclaren qualified to him, without a teammate so bad anything he does makes him look like a hero…..remember when Vettel could claim he got the maximum out of the car when he constantly had 2tenth on Kimi, now he does a lap then Leclerc betters it and he has to go find more…..now Max is just phoning it in without a challenge

    2. I’m totally impressed with Max this season. The problem is a lack of parameter for how good the Red Bull is or isn’t (Ricciardo provided that parameter). Plus Leclerc shone more for me this weekend with his qualifying and the (too) late pressure on Bottas at the end.

      1. Well said @david-br – I personally expect that at the end of the year, Max Verstappen will once again feature very high in the ranking on this site, quite possibly (if the season continues the way it is now, sharing the top two with Hamilton).

        But this race he had a quiet, mostly uneventful race, after an okay start followed by a great first few corners where he almost got Leclerc, and no benchmark from his teammate in qualifying, but the McLarens very, very, close behind, which is why he’s in the ‘the rest’ in the good, bad, and the rest article on this site. Not saying he was bad at all, just hard to judge.

  10. Hamilton for me, he crushed Bottas.
    Leclerc won’t get a lot of attention but he had a great weekend, saved his tyres against his engineer’s instructions to get closer to Bottas and nearly got P2 at the end.
    Norris as F1’s DOTD is just a little bit less stupid than Vettel getting it last year.

  11. Lando Norris will be the next British World Champion, after Hamilton wins the next 10 Championships and retires! :)

  12. Maybe because coming 4th in the 3rd best car is not earth-shattering……and maybe, Max, is underperforming giving how close the Mclaren qualified to him, without a teammate so bad anything he does makes him look like a hero…..remember when Vettel could claim he got the maximum out of the car when he constantly had 2tenth on Kimi, now he does a lap then Leclerc betters it and he has to go find more…..now Max is just phoning it in without a challenge

  13. Good driver Ham beats average driver Bot in by far best car in the field… Fact that some of you voted him best driver is utterly embarrassing…

    1. The car doesn’t go from average to good to great without serious driver input. Good engineers & good drivers can give you a good car. Great engineers & great drivers deliver a great car. Same throughout history. Lewis Hamilton isn’t a fluke. Love to see LH at Ferrari when Vettel bows out. DOTD & DOTW for me is LH – masterful. Haters gonna hate but, when the dust settles, you’ve been watching a legend.

      1. Toto Wolf (I know he’s biased!): “In general, in the UK, Lewis is not recognised how he should be recognised,” Wolff said. “One day he will stop his career with multiple records and people will say he was the greatest driver on the planet and we were witnesses on that journey and wasn’t he an interesting personality with all the things he did apart [from F1]?
        “But for whatever reason, there is this idea of hitting out. And maybe it provides a better headline or gives more clicks or sells more newspapers. But I don’t think it recognises the opportunity we are part of to see maybe the best driver that has ever existed on an exceptional journey.”

        1. Lewis is an F1 great and people here know that already. It’s just that F1 is nowhere near as competitive as other sports. He can win 10 championships in a Mercedes with only 1 or 2 cars challenging him, and he will never get the same public respect as sportsmen in more competitive sports. Even Jonny Wilkinson will go down as more of a sporting legend for the 2003 world cup win, because he encapsulates the qualities people admire in a sportsman here, Lewis does not. He comes across effeminate, insecure, and obsessed with corporate fakery.

  14. Yeah Norris. He looks like he has the goods. I’ll ask again how much longer will Gasly last?

  15. Lewis or max.. not sure. Both did well and are by far the fastest drivers on track.
    Norris and Sainz a good follow up.

  16. Hamilton deserved it here, voted for him despite being seriously annoyed by mercedes dominance, what got me to vote for him was, apart from the really strong weekend even considering the car, that he defied team instructions and kept trying for fastest lap and got incredibly close to beat vettel with new soft tyres despite having old hard tyres.

    It’s unfortunate to miss a grand chelem like this as I think he’s also been ahead all race, but I think hamilton is a good driver for grand chelems in general, like clark or schumacher, in comparison to schumacher he’s helped by his better qualifying performance, schumacher must’ve missed many due to pole, just as an example monaco 1997, and hamilton’s race pace is also one of the best of his era, just like the other 2 drivers.

  17. My vote went to Hamilton.

    Although from practice and the start of qualifying it looked as if this may be one of those times when Bottas could beat Hamilton on merit it ended up with a dominant Hamilton performance to take the pole and the win and just missing out on fastest lap to Vettel who had stopped late on for soft tyres.

    Although Bottas was quickest in Q2 this was after he had done a second run, on the first runs in Q2 Hamilton had been the quickest and then had no need to run again in that session as obviously those were the tyres that he would start the race on, that was when I started to think that it would again be Hamilton who came on top in the battle for pole, and that is how it turned out.

    Come the race Hamilton seemed to make the slightly better start and retained the lead and then was never troubled on his way to victory, Bottas could not even stay with him to mount a challenge and there was significant gap between first and second at the end with Bottas instead having to worry about Leclerc closing in on him.

    The McLaren pair of Sainz and Norris both had good weekends, Norris had the better qualifying but had the poorer race start and his car problems and Ricciardo eventually cost him further places in the race.

    I think the fact that Norris is rookie probably meant I ranked his performance above that of Sainz for the whole weekend.

Comments are closed.