Qualifying in France: Leclerc on pole position for the seventh time, Frenchmen not able to resist home pressure

Formula 1 visited the Paul Ricard circuit in France for its twelfth race of the season. Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc took pole position in Saturday’s qualifying. Reigning world champion Max Verstappen had to settle for second place. Despite the new upgrades, Mercedes did not enter the battle for the top positions.

Track limits eliminated Schumacher, five drivers from five different teams dropped out of the first qualifying session

In the first part of qualifying, Leclerc set the pace from the start, two tenths ahead of championship leader Verstappen of the Netherlands. But the first qualifying session is not about the first positions, but about the last five.

The home fans were disappointed with the performance of Pierre Gasly, who only managed to finish 16th in his AlphaTauri and thus dropped out of qualifying.

Mick Schumacher had to say goodbye to qualifying early. He managed a fast lap at the very end of qualifying, but his excitement was quickly replaced by sadness when his time was wiped out for breaking track limits at turn three.

This left Schumacher in only 19th place. However, he will line up on the grid seventeenth, with Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) and Kevin Magnussen (Haas) starting from the back row due to penalties for new engine components.

Lance Stroll (Aston Martin), Guangyu Zhou (Alfa Romeo) and Nicholas Latifi (Williams) also dropped out of the first qualifying session. Latifi’s teammate, Alex Albon, made it through to the second part of qualifying despite a botched last lap, which saw him spin out at turn eight.

Third qualifying without home representation, Ricciardo’s woes continue

The second qualifying session was without any major surprises. The Ferrari cars jumped out in front, with Sainz even nine tenths faster than Verstappen.

At the end of the qualifying session, the drivers in the last five quickly changed, unfortunately for the French fans, the home driver Esteban Ocon (Alpine) finished among them.

Mercedes had to fight for a place in the last part of qualifying until the very end. Both George Russell and Lewis Hamilton did their job and made it out of the eliminations. But the gap at the top was still huge.

While Lando Norris made it through to the third qualifying session quite easily, his McLaren teammate Daniel Ricciardo finished 11th. The Australian is still lagging behind Norris’ performance and it’s no wonder that his future in Formula 1 is still being speculated, even though he recently confirmed that he will remain at McLaren for next season.

So the following drivers – Ricciardo, Ocon, Bottas, Vettel and Albon – did not make it through to the last part of qualifying.

Leclerc stole pole position from the two Red Bulls. Mercedes, despite new upgrades, didn’t fight for the top spots

Leclerc and Verstappen went into a fierce battle for the advantage of starting from first place going into Sunday’s Grand Prix. Ferrari tried to make up the deficit on the straights by using Carlos Sainz, who will start the race from the very tail of the grid.

Even so, Verstappen was quicker in the second, mostly flat sector by more than two tenths of a second. But Ferrari’s strength was shown in the last sector, with the Maranello stable’s monoblocs being unrivalled fastest in the slow corners, and this played a decisive role in the final result.

Leclerc set an impressive time of 1:30.872 on his final lap, which secured him pole position three tenths of a second ahead of second-placed Verstappen.

Sergio Pérez will line up on the second row ahead of Hamilton on Sunday. Norris set the fifth fastest time and will be joined on the third row by Russell. Alonso took seventh place, and Júki Cunoda eighth.

Sainz and Magnussen took part in the third qualifying session, but due to the aforementioned penalties they will be on the tail of the grid tomorrow.

You can see the final result of today’s qualifying in the attached Twitter post below.

Source: F1 TV