2021 Formula One French Grand Prix

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French GP.jpg

Which team will score the most points in France?

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    292
Welcome to the 2021 Formula One French Grand Prix from Paul Ricard.

The French Grand Prix has been held at 16 different venues since the inaugural event took place well over a century ago in 1906. This weekend Formula One returns to France for the 89th edition of the event.

Paul Ricard was of course originally built as a test circuit, rather than for Grand Prix racing, and is renowned for having as many as 167 track configurations. (Of course very few of these are actually suitable for Grand Prix racing.) The track is not one of the most popular on the calendar amongst fans, but a close championship thus far will no doubt make the weekend that little bit more important, and hopefully more exciting.

What will be interesting to see is how the teams fare, with the last two races being held at street circuits, and perhaps less representative of everyone's true pace. It will be a big weekend for title rivals Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, who both failed to score points in Baku. The former after a tyre failure while the Dutch driver led the race, and caused a red flag. The latter after a mistake into turn one when the race was restarted.

The weather this weekend is forecast to be hot and cloudy, but with a small chance of rain on race day. Mercedes have historically been very strong at Paul Ricard, but strong performances from Red Bull make them contenders this weekend. We also shouldn't rule out a surprise on Saturday, with Charles Leclerc having taken pole at the last two weekends, albeit in unusual circumstances.

The favourites will be the usual faces from this season in Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton. Sergio Perez will no doubt be looking to keep up the good form he found in Baku, taking his first race victory for Red Bull, and impressively becoming the first driver to win for multiple teams in the hybrid era. Valtteri Bottas will look to make the most of a new chassis this weekend, as he hopes to end the spell of bad luck that has plagued his start to the season. Interestingly chassis number six is the one that Lewis Hamilton drove to victory in Bahrain, Portugal and Spain.

Let us know what you're looking forward to about this weekend, and don't forget to vote in this week's poll!
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About author
Charlie Lockwood
Charlie Lockwood
23. Motorsport and Sim Racing enthusiast.

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Comments

paracletus
Mildly interesting race, red bull turn to guess the pit stops right this time.
It's quite close up front, but again not enough video of further back where the action usually is.
 
ZuneGuy
muzikant said:
the sport is always changing. Mercedes has just been lucky that nothing has changed in F1 for 7 years and were able to remain dominant. all those world titles in all those years with no competition and with 50 hp more than any other team. the redbull and merc are evenly matched. What do you want? more free easy world titles for Hamilton
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Nope, F1 changed regulations. For years they were trying to think of how they could make that racing closer and this is how they have done it. When Red Bull was winning the sport changed completely by moving to hybrid engines, that was a change to move to a more eco friendly engine because of global warming, and other things.

The changes that have been made recently are clearly changes to make the racing tighter, but what they've done is taken all the natural power and abilities that made the Mercedes the most powerful package. Red Bull has not gotten any more powerful in one year, it's that the aero regulation changes have made low downforce aero packages to suffer more. It hasn't revolutionized the sport, its just made the racing closer, but they did it by taking all the natural car specifics away from the Mercedes team - that's a weak way to improve a sport by purposefully removing performance from another car by changing specific car regulations, it has just made another car more powerful.
 
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D
I fell asleep during the race, not because it was boring, I'm a Narcoleptic and I often fall asleep. Teacher meetings were often a source of tension between the Missus & Me when I'd doze through whatever it was the teachers were telling us about our little angels. but....anyhow....
What the heck happened to Ferrari? Did they just stay out on dead tires?
 
PickABetterUsername01
ZuneGuy said:
Nope, F1 changed regulations. For years they were trying to think of how they could make that racing closer and this is how they have done it. When Red Bull was winning the sport changed completely by moving to hybrid engines, that was a change to move to a more eco friendly engine because of global warming, and other things.

The changes that have been made recently are clearly changes to make the racing tighter, but what they've done is taken all the natural power and abilities that made the Mercedes the most powerful package. Red Bull has not gotten any more powerful in one year, it's that the aero regulation changes have made low downforce aero packages to suffer more. It hasn't revolutionized the sport, its just made the racing closer, but they did it by taking all the natural car specifics away from the Mercedes team.
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Cry me a river.

Imagine complaining because races are closer now.

Verstappen did exactly the same thing the "godly" sjw did in Spain. Except Verstappen risked it when he was in 1st AND had to overtake both mercs.
 
Appie Kuipers
ZuneGuy said:
Nope, F1 changed regulations. For years they were trying to think of how they could make that racing closer and this is how they have done it. When Red Bull was winning the sport changed completely by moving to hybrid engines, that was a change to move to a more eco friendly engine because of global warming, and other things.

The changes that have been made recently are clearly changes to make the racing tighter, but what they've done is taken all the natural power and abilities that made the Mercedes the most powerful package. Red Bull has not gotten any more powerful in one year, it's that the aero regulation changes have made low downforce aero packages to suffer more. It hasn't revolutionized the sport, its just made the racing closer, but they did it by taking all the natural car specifics away from the Mercedes team - that's a weak way to improve a sport by purposefully removing performance from another car by changing specific car regulations, it has just made another car more powerful.
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I just look at my screen, see a close race, the rest does not interest me atall!
 
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P
This is what we have been waiting for for years.. a battle for the championship between drivers of different teams and also the best two drivers on the grid this year. Also very strong strategy of Red Bull today. I expected more from Mercedes in that area… why not use different strategies between drivers? Bottas was very clear on the radio I think. He wanted a 2-stop race.
 
K
Poor Bottas, taking all the blame for Hamilton's defeat today. I don't get it, he couldn't stand Verstappen, Hamilton didn't stand either. Why do people blame only Bottas if Hamilton also failed to resist and was so easily overtaken?
 
T
Great win / risky strategy. Max just cruised by, was not expecting that.
Really enjoying this season so far, Norris again did really well, and also nice to see Alpine up there with Alonso.
Ferraris not up to pace this race.
Common Stappers!
 
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Terry Rock
Bad strategy by Mercedes.
They should have reacted to RBR's late call with Max by pitting Bottas for new tires.
He had the gap and it would have given him a fighting chance to keep Max behind for longer.
This was a massive cock-up on the part of the strategist.
They cannot afford to do this too many times this season or it will end quickly.
Honda brought a powerplant capable of usurping Mercedes' this year.
It also seems capable of bringing out the best in the handling package.
 
T
Terry Rock said:
Bad strategy by Mercedes.
They should have reacted to RBR's late call with Max by pitting Bottas for new tires.
He had the gap and it would have given him a fighting chance to keep Max behind for longer.
This was a massive cock-up on the part of the strategist.
They cannot afford to do this too many times this season or it will end quickly.
Honda brought a powerplant capable of usurping Mercedes' this year.
It also seems capable of bringing out the best in the handling package.
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I'm loving Honda's come back this year.
 
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T
Mercedes's pride made them loose the race today. After the all the heat that the fans took to hamilton for the last restart on baku, mercedes wanted to fix his image with a glorious victory humiliating rbr again like in barcelona.

So they let rbr to undercut them knowing that they had more pace, but they didn't count with the factor of the rain cleaning the rubber, the track being more abrasive and they overvalued their own tyre management, wasting an easy victory just for pride.

Had they keep him on track for 2 to 4 laps more he would had won the race as he was clearly in the faster car, proof of that is that verstappen never got to open a gap enough to keep him out of his drs zone consistently, hamilton was max's gearbox shadow with certain ease. Lewis would had closed the gap to max, and with faster tyres and better tyre management he would had overtaken him with ease.

Meanwhile when lewis was leading max was never able to get into the drs zone consistently. We are going to see mercedes winning at least one if not more of austria's races, because now they need to change the narrative after 3 embarrasing looking races in the eyes of the fans and save some face before they keep letting rbr to be close to them.

I think that it's going to be after the summer stop or in the last third of the championship that they are going to shift up one gear and win the championship making it look as if they won against the elements as the underdogs.

It also beneficts them rbr winning the constructors championship, as from the end of this season the aero development regulations allow more cfd and windtunnel hours for the team that's second clasified in the championship than to the champion.

At the end of this season rbr will look like a bunch of fools.
 
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Ronaldoz87
TRASGU said:
Mercedes's pride made them loose the race today. After the all the heat that the fans took to hamilton for the last restart on baku, mercedes wanted to fix his image with a glorious victory humiliating rbr again like in barcelona.

So they let rbr to undercut them knowing that they had more pace, but they didn't count with the factor of the rain cleaning the rubber, the track being more abrasive and they overvalued their own tyre management, wasting an easy victory just for pride.

Had they keep him on track for 2 to 4 laps more he would had won the race as he was clearly in the faster car, proof of that is that verstappen never got to open a gap enough to keep him out of his drs zone consistently, hamilton was max's gearbox shadow with certain ease. Lewis would had closed the gap to max, and with faster tyres and better tyre management he would had overtaken him with ease.

Meanwhile when lewis was leading max was never able to get into the drs zone consistently. We are going to see mercedes winning at least one if not more of austria's races, because now they need to change the narrative after 3 embarrasing looking races in the eyes of the fans and save some face before they keep letting rbr to be close to them.

I think that it's going to be after the summer stop or in the last third of the championship that they are going to shift up one gear and win the championship making it look as if they won against the elements as the underdogs.

It also beneficts them rbr winning the constructors championship, as from the end of this season the aero development regulations allow more cfd and windtunnel hours for the team that's second clasified in the championship than to the champion.

At the end of this season rbr will look like a bunch of fools.
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Shall we print this and foreverize it at the front page to remember your words? It will be funny to laugh at.
 
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PickABetterUsername01
TRASGU said:
Had they keep him on track for 2 to 4 laps more he would had won the race as he was clearly in the faster car, proof of that is that verstappen never got to open a gap enough to keep him out of his drs zone consistently, hamilton was max's gearbox shadow with certain ease. Lewis would had closed the gap to max, and with faster tyres and better tyre management he would had overtaken him with ease.
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Ehm, no. Both mercs right right behind Max after the first pit stop for quite a while, but dropped back eventually. That's when RBR used that opportunity to pit a second time and cover a possible undercut in case mercs did the same as in hungary/spain.
 
D
Two weeks ago, Lewis said the RBs had too much grip in the middle(tight) section. This week Lewis said he lost all his time on the straights. The ease that both Perez & Verstapen passed the Mercs on the straights suggests the Merc engineers had added some downforce, at least enough to compromise the straight-line speed. That might also suggest how Lewis was able to use the added downforce to run fairly competitive laps til the very end of the tire life .
RedBull Ring is one of the very few Tilke tracks I enjoy to both drive and watch. Vers has proven he knows how to BANZAI the corner at the end of the long uphill straight. If Merc tries to compromise and reduce the downforce for a little more VMAX, that might open them up to attacks in the 2nd half of the lap.
Another nail biter. Why hasn't anyone done the Schu thing and run THREE stops???
(I think I know why, just curious)
 
LeSunTzu
Clearly Mercedes had a suboptimal strategy, underestimating both the undercut and the 2-stop strategy, but anyway Red Bull just looked faster.
 
muzikant
LeSunTzu said:
Clearly Mercedes had a suboptimal strategy, underestimating both the undercut and the 2-stop strategy, but anyway Red Bull just looked faster.
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what was already said by Toto himself and Honer Max had a good outlap before his stop..but I didn't think the Mercedes was slower than Redbull. Strategy won especially today, what happened in Barcelona at RB happened today at Merc. I hope for more of these races this season hopefully no more walkover for Merc.

And also all compliments to Sergio, I hope they give him a new contract after this year and hopefully he can win a few races too
 
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Interslice
Staff
Premium
Great race again today. Glad i was wrong about Mercedes figuring things out after a few races and normal service resuming with Hamilton p1 and Verstappen p2 nearly every race.

Only that i have raced here in sims and know it semi ok, it must be really hard to follow where the cars are for regular viewers. Great track, I would like to see the commit to a few layouts and fill in some run off areas with some features. Any track that pushes the tyres hard is a keeper these days.
 

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