Hamilton beats Bottas for pole in France

Record 86th pole for Lewis Hamilton in the superior Mercedes

Mercedes ran 1-2 in every session this weekend, such is the superiority of the Aldo Costa designed Mercedes. Lewis Hamilton turned a lap of 1m28.319s to take pole position for the France GP at Paul Ricard.

Valtteri Bottas will line up 2nd 0.157s behind.

The Ferrari of Sean Leclerc was third while his teammate Sebastian Vettel had gearbox issues and could only manage 7th quick.

Max Verstappen will start 4th ahead of the two McLarens of Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz Jr.

The Ferraris have no chance of winning

Behind Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo took eighth on the grid at Renault’s home race, with Pierre Gasly and Antonio Giovinazzi rounding out the top 10.

Struggles getting the Soft tires up to temperature saw eight of the top 10 make it to Q3 on the Medium compound tire, with Giovinazzi and Gasly squeezing through on Softs.

Alexander Albon narrowly missed out on a top-10 starting position after qualifying 11th for Toro Rosso ahead of Kimi Raikkonen, while Nico Hulkenberg wound up 13th for Renault after an error on his final lap meant he was unable to improve.

Sergio Perez took 14th for Racing Point, while Kevin Magnussen was more than a second off a place in Q3 as he languished down in P15.

Quotes

Hamilton and Bottas agree their Mercedes cars cannot be beaten

Lewis Hamilton
It's not an easy track here and Valtteri's been quick all weekend, so I'm really happy to have got the potential out of the car. The team has done a fantastic job. I was chipping away and those last two laps were the ones. The wind picked up and it was quite gusty around the track. On that last lap, I was up nearly half a second but I just lost it in the second to last corner, the gust took the back end. But, I was still up on my previous best, which is the main thing. I'm just really happy, we've been working really hard and overall, it's some great teamwork. It's going to be another hot day tomorrow and the tires will be a challenge, but I'm excited to see how it will play out.

Valtteri Bottas
Overall, it's been a pretty good weekend for me so far, but Lewis put in some really strong laps in Q3 which I was unfortunately unable to match. I couldn't get the corner combination of Turn 8 and 9 quite right and that's where I lost one and a half tenths to him in the first run of Q3, otherwise our lap times looked pretty similar. On the second run, I had no tow on the straights which made it almost impossible to improve. It looks like tomorrow will be challenging; the temperatures are forecasted to be very high which will make it tricky for the tires, so it's not going to be easy. But it's close, I feel good and the points will be given out tomorrow.

Toto Wolff
It's been a good weekend for us so far and we've seen a strong Qualifying session. This track suits our car; we have lots of downforce which is an advantage on a circuit that is less power sensitive and has many corner variants. Both drivers were strong today, but ultimately Lewis came out on top. I think there was a bit more wind in the end of Q3, so most drivers were struggling, but Lewis put in a really strong lap and managed to improve on his times. It will be very hot tomorrow, so the challenge will be to get the tires to the end; it's good to start on the Mediums, but all drivers around us will be on the same tire. There are two strong drivers in the second row, so we'll need a good initial get-away and good reliability to finish the weekend on a good note.

Andrew Shovlin
Well done to the whole team on another front row lock-out and to Lewis on another pole position. A gust of wind cost him four tenths to himself in the last couple of corners; this just shows how well his lap was going up until that point, that it still put him on pole by a healthy margin. The car has been good to work with today, the changes overnight seemed to help the balance and the bulk of the work this morning was understanding how to get the most out of the tires on a single lap. Qualifying itself was quite straightforward. We wanted to start the race on the Mediums, so had to get through the second Qualifying session on that compound. As it happened, more teams than ever were successful in doing this, but it's no bad thing that the cars around us will be starting the race on the same rubber. Our focus now moves to the race. We're anticipating the hottest track temperatures that we've raced on all year and Ferrari and Red Bull are often strong in these conditions, so we won't take anything for granted.

More to follow……

Qualifying Results

[adinserter name="GOOGLE AD"]