F1 Driver Ratings: France 2019

Lewis Hamilton dominated the French GP to make it six wins from eight as he looks to close in on a 6th world championship.

Valtteri Bottas could not get close as he faded away midrace and never looked like challenging his Mercedes teammate and instead had to fend off a late challenge from Charles Leclerc.

Leclerc maximised his 3rd position as did Max Verstappen in 4th. It was a lonely race for the top five drivers for the majority of the Grand Prix.

As always, the order below is the finishing order of the Grand Prix.

2019 French Grand Prix – Circuit Paul Ricard

Lewis Hamilton: 9.5/10

Valtteri Bottas: 6.5/10

Charles Leclerc: 9/10

Max Verstappen: 8.5/10

Sebastian Vettel: 6.5/10

Carlos Sainz: 9/10

Kimi Raikkonen: 8/10

Nico Hulkenberg: 8/10

Lando Norris: 8.5/10

Pierre Gasly: 3.5/10

Daniel Ricciardo: 7/10

Sergio Perez: 6.5/10

Lance Stroll: 5/10

Daniil Kvyat: 7/10

Alexander Albon: 6/10

Antonio Giovinazzi: 6/10

Kevin Magnussen: 4.5/10

Robert Kubica: 6/10

George Russell: 6/10

RETIRED

Romain Grosjean: 4/10

Not for the first time, Lewis Hamilton takes the highest rating of the week. What more can you say? He drove an exemplary weekend and when it mattered most he showed his superiority. His qualifying lap was good enough for a record-extending 86th pole position, he had one of the best starts ever in his F1 career as he hooked the car up and left the field and he pulled a two second gap to become nine seconds in the laps building up to his pitstop.

Whatever you think about his personality, his team radio calls, whatever, he is without doubt one of F1’s greats. Only a few people have ever had a better record than Hamilton and the fact that you can put Hamilton in the argument says a lot for itself.

The Mercedes is the best car this year but Hamilton managed to keep well within the championship fight in 2017 and 2018 (with a car that had similar performance than the Ferrari) before Ferrari fell apart whilst Mercedes and Hamilton did not.

This year might not be seen as one of his best seasons in F1 because of his rivals unable to mount a challenge each weekend but it’s races like France, where he romps away that are just as impressive as a hard, fierce battle that we saw in Canada.

Also not for the first time, is Pierre Gasly receiving the lowest rating. There’s been eight full race weekends now and Gasly has not shown any promise of improving. In F1, you get a lot more practice time in the car compared to other motorsport series too, plus a few days of in-season testing. Gasly has had more than enough seat time now.

To get a solitary point and barely make it into Q3 is unacceptable in a Red Bull (third best car on the grid). The team clearly have a lack of confidence as they did not even try to qualify Gasly into Q3 on the Medium tyres; rightly so as he only just scraped through on the Soft tyres.

At the very least, I expected Gasly to be helping out Verstappen by pressuring the Ferrari cars by not pitting until very late and holding them back a little but he is not even fast enough to do that, he is busy in the midfield trying to even score some points!

The problem Red Bull have is, who do they get to replace Gasly? It just shows how good Ricciardo was as Verstappen’s teammate. Only a few drivers would be able to match Verstappen on occasion but the problem with Gasly is that the pace deficit is extreme.