F1 Talk: Hamilton cruises to another win in France

In 2018, Mercedes led every session at the French Grand Prix. Fast forward 12 months and Mercedes did it again.

Lewis Hamilton took pole position as Mercedes locked out the front row for a 63rd time (another record as they move one ahead of McLaren, Ferrari and Williams) before going on to lead every lap in the race and easing to a 79th win in Formula One.

Michael Schumacher’s record tally of 91 wins will be under threat over the next 12 months and his seven world titles are too. Without a doubt, Hamilton is one of F1’s greats and it will probably be only after he retires when some people realise how good Hamilton actually is.

As expected, Ferrari never got close to challenging Mercedes although Charles Leclerc did an excellent job of putting some pressure on Valtteri Bottas in the final few laps of the Grand Prix but it was not enough to prevent a 50th 1-2 for the Silver Arrows in F1.

The Mercedes W10 is an incredible car. It is staggeringly versatile – able to dominate and win on tracks that are slow-speed such as Monaco and medium to high-speed tracks such as Paul Ricard or China. Everyone at Brackley and everyone who has helped develop this best of a car deserve as much credit as Hamilton and Bottas get.

Toto Wolff, has built up a team that is driven to win, driven to improve and a team that live off winning and beating their rivals. Mercedes lost just three races in each of the 2014 and 2015 seasons and just two in 2016. Can they replicate those phenomenal years once again? It looks like its more than possible.

Sebastian Vettel had a troubled Q3 which left him with just one shot at getting his car onto the first two rows of the grid. Vettel did not get the lap together and could only qualify 7th. He made good work of overtaking the McLaren cars but was unable to mount an attack on Max Verstappen and had to settle for 5th and the consolation of a point for the fastest lap of the race.

So it was pretty uneventful at the front but there was plenty of overtakes and action in the midfield.

From the get-go, the McLaren, Renault, Toro Rosso, Alfa Romeo, Racing Point, Haas and even the Williams drivers were all battling for position. Pierre Gasly was in the mix too, despite being in the Red Bull.

Sergio Perez received a five second time penalty for ‘leaving the track and gaining an advantage.’ It was the right decision as Perez went into turn three behind Kevin Magnussen and Alexander Albon and even though he went around the bollard (as he was meant to do) but he emerged out of turn four in front of Magnussen and Albon, thus gaining an advantage.

I still think the stewards should have told Perez to let Albon and Magnussen through on the track rather than giving him a time penalty because gaining those two positions may have resulted in a net gain, even with the five second penalty.

Early on in the race, Robert Kubica and George Russell were having a mega battle with the two of them going side by side through the flat out, 185MPH corner of Signes. It was for last place but I’m sure both drivers enjoyed it. Kubica beat Russell for the first time this year but I am still not impressed by Kubica’s performances and he just lacks speed compared to Russell, despite this being Russell’s first season in F1.

Meanwhile, Kimi Raikkonen had a great race as he held off Nico Hulkenberg at bay for much of the Grand Prix. It was actually Raikkonen’s best drive of the year in my opinion with super consistent laptimes and making exactly the right decisions in the last lap scrap at the end.

Antonio Giovinazzi is finding more and more qualifying pace and is definitely going in the right direction, he just needs to improve his race pace which is more important in the midfield than qualifying. He has the exact opposite attributes of Lance Stroll.

As for the last lap battle, the TV director missed it live unfortunately. The ‘poor’ TV directing received a lot of backlash after the race but to me it was no worse than it has been for any other race this year. It’s a really tough job and is undermined by most people as there are so many things going on. They have to watch the race whilst having a dozen people speaking in their ear and deciding when to show replays, play team radio, when to display graphics – many things and it is very complicated.

The TV director decided to show the Bottas and Leclerc battle for 2nd which ultimately came to an anti-climax. But, if Leclerc had managed to overtake Bottas and the TV director decided to show the midfield battle then he/she would have received even more criticism for ‘missing the only bit of action at the front’ so it was a tough choice.

On the whole, the TV director for Formula One is nowhere near as bad as other motorsport series but it could be improved. The camera shots for a start do not show the true speed of the cars, instead they are positioned to show advertising in the background of a shot. This alone can make a big difference as to how the ‘show’ looks on TV.

Anyway, the last lap battle involved Lando Norris, Daniel Ricciardo, Raikkonen and Hulkenberg. Norris was dealing with a hydraulics issue which allowed the three drivers mentioned to close in. Ricciardo went for a move around the outside at the chicane on the Mistral Straight and went off the track and came back on in what the stewards said was a, ‘unsafe re-join.’

The same penalty Vettel was given in Canada (yes, you guessed it a five second time penalty) was awarded to Ricciardo. I did not agree with this penalty for Vettel in Canada and I don’t agree with it here.

Ricciardo had the inside for the corner and it was more Norris trying to get back around the outside, on the dirty line, therefore getting a slide and making a mistake than Ricciardo ‘forcing Norris off the track to avoid the collision’ as the stewards put it. It’s getting silly now.

I am SO glad that the F1 stewards don’t steward World RX, Formula E or IndyCar. They would give penalties for everything. What Ricciardo did was good, hard racing and Norris made a mistake by trying to get back past the Australian.

I can’t defend Ricciardo’s move on Raikkonen though on the run down to Signes. That was a slam-dunk penalty. You can’t overtake off the track and although I admire that he went for it, it’s hard to justify an illegal overtake. Ricciardo got a 5-second time penalty for this too, resulting in a total of 10 seconds worth of penalties.

Hulkenberg made it 3-wide at one point and Norris even tried to go around the outside of the German at De Beausset but couldn’t quite make it stick. In general, it was good racing (apart from Ricciardo’s overtake on Raikkonen) and was probably the most exciting part of the race.

Had Norris not had any reliability issues, McLaren would likely have scored a 6th and 7th. It was the best pace McLaren have shown all year and even though they have one point less than this time last year, the feeling is much better for McLaren.

They have been competitive on a variety of tracks, they have not maximised everywhere yet are 4th in the constructors’ championship and they are on an upward trend rather than a downward one. McLaren’s 3rd row lockout on Saturday was the team’s best qualifying result since Italy 2014.

The car is developing nicely and the team remain very positive. With Renault finally building a reliable and powerful (relative to last year) power unit, McLaren are in a good place and are definitely the most improved team from 2018.

When teams go up, others come down and Haas have been on the receiving end of the string. Haas’s loss of pace is a complete mystery. to me. They looked very good after the first few races, with the best qualifying speed outside of the Top 3, they just struggled with race speed and dealing with the thinner tread Pirelli compound of tyre.

But now, they are slow in qualifying and are slow in the race. France was one of Haas’s strongest tracks last year and with Austria coming up this weekend (their strongest track last year) it does not look good for the American outfit.

France was never going to be a stellar race and it allowed the cynics of F1 to have their say on the sport. I’ll save my thoughts for another article but what I will say is that those who are saying their have been years of dominance and boring races in the past are right, but F1 needs to look at having a positive future – a growth mindset.

At the moment, the sport does not have that mentality and if nothing changes, seasons like this will be repeated again. The world has changed with the exponential growth of the internet and social media, F1 ostensibly has but in reality it has not moved on and has missed the boat once again.

Thanks goodness Austria is next, usually one of F1’s better races.