An extremely evenly matched qualification! Who took pole position?

We have had an extremely close qualifying for Sunday’s French Grand Prix. Until the last moments it was not clear who would take the first place for the start of the race. But we also saw two crashes and red flags.

In the first part of qualifying, we saw two accidents. The first one was the young Japanese driver Yuki Tsunoda in the Alpha Tauri, who failed to control his car in the first corner. The track marshals then gave him an unusually long time to get back on track, but he failed to shift into first gear and get his car moving again.

Tsunoda will therefore start Sunday’s race from last place. The other driver to crash in Q1 was Mick Schumacher. He ended up in the barriers after a driving error of his own.

The son of the famous legend was in 14th position going into Q2. As a result of the accident, red flags were displayed, bringing the first part of qualifying to a premature end.

Lance Stroll, in the Aston Martin, will be the penultimate driver to start Sunday’s French Grand Prix. Unfortunately for him, qualifying didn’t go well, his first timed attempt failed, his second failed and he didn’t get to the third due to the aforementioned crash.

Not surprisingly, Nikita Mazepin also failed to qualify for the second part of Saturday’s qualifying, starting from eighteenth place. Position number seventeen belongs to Räikkönen, while Nicholas Latifi in the Williams will start sixteenth.

The 25-year-old Canadian missed out on qualifying for Q2 by just two thousandths of a second! That was the time he lost to his teammate George Russell, who managed to advance from fifteenth place to the next round.

The thirteen advancing drivers went into the second part of qualifying on medium compound tyres. Russell was the only one to go into the qualifying battle on a compound labelled ‘soft’.

The fifteenth driver to advance to Q2 was Schumacher. However, his Haas was damaged to the extent that he was unable to start the next part of qualifying and would start from the number 15 position behind George Russell’s Williams.

Thirteenth place at the start will be taken by Antonio Giovinazzi in his Alfa Romeo behind Sebastian Vettel. The German driver was unable to improve his time in his last fast lap and ultimately failed to progress to the next part of qualifying.

The four-time world champion attributes this to a poor grip. According to him, in the last minutes of Q2 he did not have as good grip as in the previous part of qualifying. Eleventh on the grid for Sunday’s Grand Prix will be Esteban Ocon in the Alpine.

And finally, the third and final part of Saturday’s qualifying brought an even battle for pole position. Max Verstappen was the best of the bunch and will start the French Grand Prix from pole position!

Behind him on the grid is Lewis Hamilton ahead of his teammate Valtteri Bottas. Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Pérez was fourth in qualifying.

Carlos Sainz was the man who was less than two tenths of a second behind the top three drivers with three minutes to go in Q3, talking himself into a battle for pole position. He eventually got his Ferrari up to fifth place.

Sixth on the grid would see Pierre Gasly, the complete opposite of Tsunoda so far. Charles Leclerc will start seventh on Sunday ahead of Lando Norris in the McLaren.

The talented Briton has been struggling with technical issues on his monopost since the middle of Q2, so it’s likely that an eighth place start could be the result.

Fernando Alonso will start ninth and Daniel Ricciardo rounds out the top ten. The French Grand Prix at the Paul Ricard circuit starts at 15:00, so don’t miss it. It’s going to be a tactical battle, but also, according to the forecasts so far, rain.

Source: F1 Live