2021 French GP Preview and Tips by James Punt
2021 French GP Preview and Tips
After two street races won by Red Bull, putting them 26 points clear in the Constructors Championship, we move to the south of France and the purpose-built Paul Ricard circuit for the 2021 French GP. It is a very modern facility, owned by Bernie Ecclestone and extensively used as a test track. The reason why it is so popular for testing is that it is a perfect mix of straights, chicanes and a mix of slow, medium and fast corners. It even has a sprinkler system built in to allow for wet weather testing.
After the thrills and spills of Azerbaijan it is likely to be a relatively tame affair. It is not a track to get the pulse racing as it is very much car limited. The best car gets rewarded and that is why Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton won both races here since F1 returned to the venue in 2018. Such was Mercedes car advantage in those two years that a Mercedes has been quickest in every single session and Hamilton has led all but one lap. They also locked out the front row here for both races. Only Bottas being hit by Vettel on lap 1 of the 2018 race prevented back-to-back 1-2 finishes.
2021 French GP: Mercedes No Longer The Best Car
This year however, Mercedes do not have the best car, at least not on every track. They have won three races from six, all on modern, purpose built tracks. Conversely, Red Bulls three wins have been on two street circuits and a rain affected race in Italy. Street circuits are not Mercedes forte. However, back on a regular track, they will be competitive and arguably the favourite.
A good, maybe excellent, form guide for this weekend was the Spanish GP at Barcelona, another track used extensively for testing because of its mix of corners and straights.
That weekend saw Hamilton get pole position by 0.036 seconds from Verstappen, but Verstappen grabbed the lead on the first lap and looked in a good position to win the race. However, he was unable to open a sizeable gap and as the race progressed Hamilton reeled the Red Bull in and ended up with a comfortable 15.8 second margin of victory. The Mercedes was far kinder to its rear tyres thanks to its low drag characteristics. The Red Bull has inherently more drag than the Mercedes. To compensate for that, they used a lower profile rear wing to help with straight line speed down the long straight.
That left the rear tyres not as planted as Mercedes and that caused them to overheat and lose performance. And their car was still slower down the straight. On one lap pace Red Bull were a match for Mercedes. But, over a race distance, Mercedes had them in their pocket.
Flexi Wing Complaints
The Spanish GP was when Mercedes first complained of Red Bulls ‘flexi-wing’. When speeding down the long straight, the rear wing on the Red Bull was flexing downwards, giving it a lower drag profile, but popping back up at the end of the straight to give more downforce in the corners. A nice idea….but it didn’t work well enough to beat the Mercedes.
From this weekend onwards the FIA have introduced more stringent tests to limit these flexi rear wings. Red Bull are not alone in using them and they all passed the previous tests. Even the Mercedes rear wing flexes but not to quite the same degree.
How this will affect the relative performance of the cars remains to been seen. No doubt Red Bull et al will have been working on a solution to limit any loss of performance. We won’t really know until Sunday, but we have to assume that its advantage Mercedes going into this weekend. The problem Mercedes seem to have is warming their tyres up, especially the fronts. But with this track having plenty of quicker corners, they should not have the same kind of issues that they had in Monaco and Baku.
The out lap will be enough to warm the tyres for qualifying but in the race, they might be compromised with cold tyres after the pit stops, it will take a lap to get them up to temperature and would make them vulnerable to a Red Bull that was close enough to take advantage. But they would then have to fend off a faster car on a track where overtaking opportunities exist.
2021 French GP: New Tyre Directive
We also have a new directive from the FIA regarding tyre pressures. Pirelli’s post mortem on Verstappen and Stroll’s tyres that failed in Baku came to the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with the tyres but rather the way in which they were being used. Again, like the flexi wings, nobody was breaking the rules but they had found ways run the tyres at lower pressures than those set by Pirelli. The loopholes that may have been used by teams to get around the limits set have now been closed and again, the fingers are being pointed at Red Bull. It must be said that Red Bull and Aston Martin have denied doing anything outside of Pirelli’s guidelines. Somebody is not being honest and there are many who do not believe Pirelli, in which case Red Bulls performance will not be affected.
It is a bit of a shame that the FIA are putting the brakes on Red Bulls performance just when it looks like we have a classic season in the making. When it comes to exploding tyres then the FIA have to act to save the teams from themselves, but it is unfortunate that Red Bull face a double whammy of regulation clampdowns on the same weekend.
Hamilton The Deserved Fav
Lewis Hamilton is the 2.20 favourite and I cannot argue with those odds. Value? Not really. Mercedes are not rock solid under pressure. They are not used to having serious and constant competition and mistakes are being made. Even Hamilton pressed the wrong button at the restart in Baku. Bottas is having a dreadful season and not all of his own making. He is deflated, defeated and the inevitable rumours about him being demoted to Williams are now back in the headlines. HMS Mercedes has sprung a few leaks.
Outside of the Red Bull vs. Mercedes battle we have an equally close competition between Ferrari and McLaren. Ferrari have a two point lead over McLaren and Charles Leclerc has been the fastest qualifier at the last two races. The cars strength is in slower corners and while there are some here, not as many as at Monaco or even Azerbaijan. That said, Leclerc has finished fourth or sixth in all the races he has started this season and his fourth place in Spain suggests that he will once again be in the top 6. Carlos Sainz has qualified top 6 for the last four races but his second place in Monaco excepted, things haven’t worked out well in the races.
Norris Leading For McLaren
McLaren are being led by young but maturing Lando Norris who has had five top five finishes and an eighth. It will be a concern for them that his worst finish of the season came in Spain but perversely Spain was good race for the struggling Ricciardo who qualified seventh and finished sixth. McLaren had introduced some new parts that weekend and that may have wrong footed them as they were lost on Friday but got better as the weekend went on.
Alpine looked good in practice in Spain and Ocon qualified a season best fifth, Alonso tenth. However, come the race they went backwards, Ocon finishing just ninth while Alonso only finished ahead of the two Haas. The team are trying to find out why they struggle for race pace, but they are hard to fancy home race or not.
Alpha Tauri have moved up to fifth place, top of the third division, ahead of Aston Martin by two points and fourteen clear of Alpine. Alpha Tauri have scored points in every race so far and even Tsunoda is starting to look more settled since the team moved him to Italy to be near the teams Italian base. Gasly is their main man, and he will be keen to shine in his home GP. Their performance in Spain was poor with Gasly failing to make Q3 for the only time this season and Tsunoda failed to get out Q1.
Aston Martin Improving
Aston Martin took advantage of the chaos in Baku and Vettel landed their first podium finish. The team are coming together after a very slow start. Vettel suddenly looks much happier and his performances are much improved. Back on a purposed built circuit will be the acid test and they are hard to call having been very ordinary before we had the two street races. Certainly they struggled in Spain and this track will find any weaknesses in the car.
Alfa Romeo have picked up two tenth places in the street races, finishing tenth and eleventh in both. They needed some attrition to help them get their and their pace still isn’t deserving of points on merit. Williams and Haas remain pointless and it is hard to see that changing.
It is hard to see any surprises this weekend. With the track being a very good test of the cars, the pecking order should reflect the championship standings and the Spanish GP in particular.
2021 French GP: Big Boys To Dominate
The race win should be contested by Hamilton and Verstappen with Hamilton the more likely to make it three wins from three at Paul Ricard. Perez is starting to get more comfortable in the Red Bull and he is happier than Bottas is at Mercedes. Perez has failed to score a point here in the past, but he should end that run. He really needs to improve his qualifying performances as his average of 6.8 is not good enough. His race performances are good but he is making life difficult for himself.
Best of the rest will be another Ferrari vs. McLaren battle. Ferrari have the one lap pace to beat McLaren in qualifying but McLaren are executing their races better. This track is unlikely to be so good for Ferrari and McLaren are cautiously optimistic that they can get the better of Ferrari this weekend.
No Side Markets
Sadly it would seem that with the European Championship taking place, the bookmakers have forgotten that there is a race on this weekend. Side markets not put up and just the usual H2H match ups. This looks like a race where the betting will be done on Sunday when we might have more choice, but there are two bets worth making now.
Esteban Ocon signed a new three year deal to stay at Alpine earlier this week. A bit of a surprise in my mind but it will make him feel good. It is a massive vote of confidence and allows him to relax and just get on with his job. He will be glad to get back to a regular track. He has scored points in three of the four purpose built tracks and beaten Alonso at all four. Ocon likes the track and won a race here in the junior formulas, it is his home GP and he will be in a good mood. He was comprehensively the better driver in Spain.
2021 French GP Tip: 2 points Ocon to beat Alonso @ 2.10 with Unibet
One of the features of this track is the amount of run off areas. After the close confines of Monaco and Baku this track could not be more different. There is very little to punish the drivers. Colliding with another car is the biggest risk but there is plenty of room to bale out left or right with no sanction. It is designed to be a test track and you don’t want to be crashing into walls in that situation. Drivers can be hooligans here and get away with it. It has to be said that the drivers this season are clearly trying to not crash, they are taking fewer unnecessary risks because of the budget cap. Teams just can’t afford to throw money at repairing cars, it hurts them in the pocket and takes away resources for development programmes.
So far in 2021 we have had ten cars not classified as finishers across the six races. Those six races included the two street circuits, traditionally races of higher attrition, and a wet race in Italy. In the three dry races on purpose built tracks there have been just four not classifieds. Portugal and Spain saw just one DNF in each race. At this track there was three not classified in 2018 and one in 2019. With the trend of improved reliability and drivers not taking risks, the retirement rate should remain low for the 2021 French GP.
