Wonderduck's Pond

June 23, 2018

F1 Quals: France 2018

Wow, did this day get away from me! Here's the provisional grid for the 2018 Grand Prix of France:

Pos	Driver	Car	Q1	Q2	Q3
1	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:31.271	1:30.645	1:30.029
2	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	1:31.776	1:31.227	1:30.147
3	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:31.820	1:30.751	1:30.400
4	DH Verstappen	Red Bull Racing	1:31.531	1:30.818	1:30.705
5	Smiley Ricciardo	Red Bull Racing	1:31.910	1:31.538	1:30.895
6	Kimi RÃ¤ikkÃ¶nen	Ferrari	1:31.567	1:30.772	1:31.057
7	Carlos Sainz	Renault	1:32.394	1:32.016	1:32.126
8	Charles AMX-30	Sauber Ferrari	1:32.538	1:32.055	1:32.635
9	DP Magnussen	Haas Ferrari	1:32.169	1:31.510	1:32.930
10	Lettuce Grosjean	Haas Ferrari	1:32.083	1:31.472	DNF
11	False Esteban!	Force India	1:32.786	1:32.075
12	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault	1:32.949	1:32.115
13	Sergio Perez	Force India	1:32.692	1:32.454
14	Pierre Ghastly	Toro Rosso	1:32.447	1:32.460
15	Sony Ericsson	Sauber Ferrari	1:32.804	1:32.820
16	Meatloaf Alonso	McLaren Renault	1:32.976
17	Brendon Hartley	Toro Rosso	1:33.025
18	Stoffelwaffle	McLaren Renault	1:33.162
19	Sergey, Sir Otkin	Williams Mercedes	1:33.636
20	Pleasant Stroll	Williams Mercedes	1:33.729

No huge surprises at the top of the grid. Paul Ricard is the sort of circuit that rewards high horsepower, and for all its imagined faults, the Merc engine is still the best out there. It stands to reason that they'd be on pole.

What REALLY makes no sense is the Sauber of Charles AMX-30 making it into Q3, and legitimately outpacing Haas for 8th. That's quite the accomplishment for a team as down on their luck as Sauber... this AMX-30 kid looks to be quite good, y'know?

There's a decent chance of rain during the race tomorrow... let's hope so, it'll liven up a race that's looking like a snoozer... Paul Ricard is a great test track, but for racing it appears to be missing a certain something. And it causes headaches, too.

Race in the morning, F1U! after. See ya then!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 08:43 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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1 Well...you might ask K-Mag if he thinks he was legitimately outpaced, or if he instead thinks that his relatively poor showing can be directly related to another driver's senility...but yeah, Leclerc is definitely impressive!

Posted by: Mrs. Will (Kathryn) at June 24, 2018 06:06 PM (JPRju)

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