French GP build-up: Can Bottas beat Hamilton?

Andrew Benson

BBC Sport’s chief F1 writer

Strategy? One stop. No surprise that the
best strategy is to start on the medium – it’s such a clear-cut choice that
only two of the top 10 took softs for second qualifying, and therefore their
starting tyre, Red Bull’s Pierre Gasly and Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi.

Everyone else will almost certainly be trying to stay off the soft all race, it
has been so fragile all weekend that the medium is hardly any slower and much
more durable. Pit-stop time loss is about 25 seconds under normal racing
conditions, 15 under a safety car of either kind.

Andrew Benson

BBC Sport’s chief F1 writer

Antonio Giovinazzi has not had the
easiest start to his first Formula 1 season with Alfa Romeo, but he has been
more impressive than the naked results have shown and in France he put it all
together nicely at least with a strong 10th – his best result since taking
ninth in Baku.

Team-mate Kimi Raikkonen did not make the top 10 and will start
12th.

The team were encouraged by the performance of new parts on the car, and Giovinazzi said: “I am very happy about our performance today. It’s been a positive qualifying and I am very pleased to be back in the top ten. There were a few factors behind this result: the new upgrades package seems to be working well and we were able to make the most of the tyres in these conditions.

“The track kept improving from lap to lap, so it was important to nail the last one in each part of qualifying. The only negative aspect is that we will be one of only two cars starting on soft tyres, but we can find a strategy that helps us stay in the points. We have good pace and hopefully we can get the good result that has been eluding us for too long.”

Andrew Benson

BBC Sport’s chief F1 writer

Max Verstappen and Red Bull were not
exactly thrilled to be 1.1 seconds behind Mercedes, 0.5secs off the fastest
Ferrari, and only 0.009secs ahead of Lando Norris’s McLaren.

Verstappen seemed
to indicate that Red Bull’s main problem was that the Honda engine lacks the
big final-qualifying power boost that the Renault engines finally has –
and Mercedes and Ferrari have had for yonks.

Was he worried about McLaren in
the race? “Not too much,” he said. “We are normally better in the race. They
have a power mode in qualifying, quite a strong one, so I should be all right.

“They are doing a better job compared to the beginning of the
season, they are catching up. Of course when you are so far behind it’s easy to
close that gap but to find the last few tenths is hard. Also in my final run in
Q3 I think we could have been closer to Ferrari but I had a weird behaviour in
the last two corners so that was a bit of a shame.

“When you look at last year as well it was not an easy track for
us. The car we had in qualifying was not that bad. But we lose a lot of time on
the straight. [And] also, having said that, from the car performance, we are
not extracting the most out of it.”

Team-mate Pierre Gasly was a disappointing ninth, blaming an
error in set-up choice.