Formula 1

Leclerc leads Verstappen in qualifying! 2022 French GP Quali highlights

Charles Leclerc claimed his 16th F1 Pole Position, followed by Verstappen and Perez

Qualifying proved to be an interesting session as the drivers prepared to post their best laps, many of carried new modifications and new components to their cars.

Q1

Alphatuari’s Gasly seemed to disappoint his home crowd by getting knocked out in Q1 itself. He had hoped to improve significantly with the heavy modifications to his car, but just did not seem to find the pace. Williams driver Latifi was the other driver to disappoint with new developments being made to his car, as he qualified P20 on the grid. The strong pace he displayed in the practice sessions was nowhere to be seen in this session. Schumacher had initially put up a good lap to get out of the bottom, only to have his lap time deleted, which relegated him to the P19 spot for tomorrow’s race.

Q2

Valtteri Bottas and Sebastian Vettel could not find the appropriate grip on their respective final runs before Q2 ended, which saw both of them get knocked out. McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo posted a decent lap, but a flying Magnussen pushed him out of the top ten shy of just 0.086s. French fans continued to be disappointed as Esteban Ocon couldn’t improve his performance to get into Q3.

Q3

A brilliant team strategy by Ferrari paid off beautifully as Sainz gave a nice tow to Leclerc in the final sectors in both runs to grant the latter an extra pace over Verstappen. Leclerc posted a final benchmark time of a blistering 1:30:872! Verstappen qualified P2 behind by only 0.304s after failing to improve on his previous lap. He was followed by Perez in P3. The Mexican was happy with his performance as he admitted to having the worst weekend so far this season. Japanese driver Yuki Tsunoda also posted superb laps to place himself into P8.

After an enjoyable Quali session, all eyes will be at the top two drivers tomorrow at the start for the main race. In Verstappen’s words, “Points are scored on a Sunday!”. We will also see Sainz and Magnussen start at the back of the grid, as a penalty for taking new Power Unit components. The complete driver standings for Quali are given below:

POS NO DRIVER CAR Q1 Q2 Q3 LAPS
1 16 Charles Leclerc FERRARI 1:31.727 1:31.216 1:30.872 17
2 1 Max Verstappen RED BULL RACING RBPT 1:31.891 1:31.990 1:31.176 14
3 11 Sergio Perez RED BULL RACING RBPT 1:32.354 1:32.120 1:31.335 20
4 44 Lewis Hamilton MERCEDES 1:33.041 1:32.274 1:31.765 19
5 4 Lando Norris MCLAREN MERCEDES 1:32.672 1:32.777 1:32.032 14
6 63 George Russell MERCEDES 1:33.109 1:32.633 1:32.131 20
7 14 Fernando Alonso ALPINE RENAULT 1:32.819 1:32.631 1:32.552 17
8 22 Yuki Tsunoda ALPHATAURI RBPT 1:33.394 1:32.836 1:32.780 20
9 55 Carlos Sainz FERRARI 1:32.297 1:31.081 DNF 10
10 20 Kevin Magnussen HAAS FERRARI 1:32.756 1:32.649 9
11 3 Daniel Ricciardo MCLAREN MERCEDES 1:33.404 1:32.922 12
12 31 Esteban Ocon ALPINE RENAULT 1:33.346 1:33.048 12
13 77 Valtteri Bottas ALFA ROMEO FERRARI 1:33.034 1:33.052 13
14 5 Sebastian Vettel ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES 1:33.285 1:33.276 15
15 23 Alexander Albon WILLIAMS MERCEDES 1:33.423 1:33.307 11
16 10 Pierre Gasly ALPHATAURI RBPT 1:33.439 7
17 18 Lance Stroll ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES 1:33.439 9
18 24 Zhou Guanyu ALFA ROMEO FERRARI 1:33.674 8
19 47 Mick Schumacher HAAS FERRARI 1:33.701 9
20 6 Nicholas Latifi WILLIAMS MERCEDES 1:33.794 6
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Abhishek S.

Loves long drives, sunsets and skylines (pun intended ;)). Will miss a date but not an F1 race!

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