Red Bull Motorsports
F1
Find out everything that happened at the French Grand Prix
Lewis Hamilton wins the French Grand Prix and takes the provisional championship lead, while Max Verstappen and Kimi Räikkönen join him on the podium.
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The 2018 Formula One season really is topsy-turvey. Two weeks ago, Lewis Hamilton was nowhere, a disconsolate fifth at the Canadian Grand Prix. Today, he came roaring back to win for Mercedes at the relaunched French Grand Prix.
Behind him, a first corner clattering removed the threat from his team-mate, Valtteri Bottas, and Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel. Vettel collected the blame, and a five-second penalty, and both would recover to have more work to do later.
The Circuit Paul Ricard hasn't hosted the French Grand Prix for 28 years. In fact, most of the field wasn't born when Alain Prost nipped in to steal a victory for Ferrari in 1990, but it isn't an unknown. The high plateau above Le Castellet is a popular testing venue, and a regular host of junior series races. It does have a fabled 167 different potential layouts, and a newly laid surface, so it isn't entirely familiar, but nobody in the pitlane doubted a) it would be a one-stop race and b) overtaking would prove difficult.
With Hamilton looking comfortable, Verstappen decided to shake things up. He pitted at the end of lap 25 and began to push. Under normal circumstances, Hamilton would probably have covered that, but with Ricciardo in position to hold Hamilton up, and radar images showing a bit of rain in the locale, he kept going.
Ricciardo came in next, at the end of lap 28, and resumed his place in the order, which took a little of the pressure off the leader. However, a purple lap for Verstappen triggered Hamilton's dash for the box at the end of lap 33. He emerged with a comfortable lead, and held it the flag.
The start was the closest and then after that, I was very comfortable with the balance
"The start was the closest and then after that, I was very comfortable with the balance," said Hamilton. "Max had really good pace, but fortunately I was able to eke out a little bit more when I needed it and maintain the gap. It went out to 4.5s and I kept it there. There wasn't any need to move it further than that."
Behind them, Ricciardo had an issue with his front wing. The practice sessions had been a litany of bodywork damage – the kerbs at Circuit Paul Ricard are fairly unforgiving – but the Australian didn't appear to have hit anything. He lost pace and was passed by Räikkönen for third, but was able to bring the second Red Bull home a comfortable fourth.
Behind them, Vettel recovered well to finish fifth in the second Ferrari, Magnussen was an excellent sixth for Haas, ahead of the recovering Bottas. Sainz and Nico Hülkenberg were eighth and ninth to give Renault something at their home race, and the impressive Charles Leclerc gave Sauber the final point in 10th.
After the race, there was little time for the paddock to reflect. The forklifts moved in and the pack-down was underway as the circus began its mad scramble to get to Austria's Red Bull Ring for part two of its first-ever triple header.
The advantage seems extremely track-specific at the moment, but Mercedes have made a clean sweep of all four races since the Austrian Grand Prix returned to the calendar. With the tame in the lead of both championships, that's ominous for the Silver Arrows' rivals.
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