F1 French Grand Prix: Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel stumbles to seventh-place qualifying run

Sebastian Vettel finished seventh in qualifying for the F1 French Grand Prix.

Sebastian Vettel stumbled to a seventh-place in qualifying for the Formula 1 French Grand Prix as Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc qualified third.

With only a faint hope of mounting a championship challenge in 2019, Vettel was unable to deliver when the time came in France. Third place, a position taken eventually by Leclerc, was the target — behind the Mercedes tandem of pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton and No. 2 qualifier Valtteri Bottas — but several mistakes and a reported upshift problem saw Vettel bail out of his first attempt in Q3 before a poor final effort left him just seventh.

“I don’t know what happened, but I lost so much momentum that there was no point to finish the lap,” said Vettel. “It was up and down. Some laps I felt really good and others I didn’t so obviously, in the end I didn’t get the best out of the car which is not satisfying. But as I said, it was difficult for me because some laps it was really good and was just coming but other laps, I don’t know why, I didn’t have the grip that I seemed to have before.”

“It’s a shame that it happened in Q3. It would have been better to have been slower in the other segments, but that’s what it is today.”

As if to rub salt in the wound, Vettel went on to confirm that most of the upgrades brought to the track by Ferrari for France had failed to improve performance. As a result, most were not used in qualifying.

“We reverted on most of them, so they were obviously not the step we had expected but, tomorrow I think we have good pace to race. Obviously, Mercedes is too far away but, we should be in the mix with Red Bull.”

At the other end of the scale was Leclerc. Having made costly errors in previous qualifying sessions, most notably in Azerbaijan, the Monegasque driver secured third place. Behind only the two Mercedes cars, although by some margin, Leclerc feels he got the most out of the car on Saturday.

“At the end, I’m pretty happy with my lap,” said Leclerc. “Unfortunately, today it was not enough, but we need to keep working and I’m pretty sure we will close the gap at some point. Today I think it was the best we could have done.”

With Mercedes having a massive pace advantage on the rest of the field, Leclerc is targeting turn one as the best opportunity to mix it with the Silver Arrows and to put himself in the mix for a maiden race win.

“Well that’s certainly the target,” said Leclerc. “It will be very important. We are very strong on the straights, they are quite strong in the corners so, hopefully tomorrow will be a good race.”

Qualifying Results

Pos.

Driver

Constructor

Q1

Q2

Q3

1

Lewis Hamilton

Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport

1:30.609

1:29.520

1:28.319

2

Valtteri Bottas

Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport

1:30.550

1:29.437

1:28.605

3

Charles Leclerc

Scuderia Ferrari

1:30.647

1:29.699

1:28.965

4

Max Verstappen

Aston Martin Red Bull Racing

1:31.327

1:30.099

1:29.409

5

Lando Norris

McLaren F1 Team

1:30.989

1:30.019

1:29.418

6

Carlos Sainz

McLaren F1 Team

1:31.073

1:30.319

1:29.522

7

Sebastian Vettel

Scuderia Ferrari

1:31.075

1:29.506

1:29.799

8

Daniel Ricciardo

Renault F1 Team

1:30.954

1:30.369

1:29.918

9

Pierre Gasly

Aston Martin Red Bull Racing

1:31.152

1:30.421

1:30.184

10

Antonio Giovinazzi

Alfa Romeo Racing

1:31.180

1:30.408

1:33.420

11

Alexander Albon

Red Bull Toro Rosso Honda

1:31.445

1:30.461

 

12

Kimi Raikkonen

Alfa Romeo Racing

1:30.972

1:30.533

 

13

Nico Hulkenberg

Renault F1 Team

1:30.865

1:30.544

 

14

Sergio Perez

SportPesa Racing Point F1 Team

1:30.964

1:30.738

 

15

Kevin Magnussen

Rich Energy Haas F1 Team

1:31.166

1:31.440

 

16

Daniil Kvyat

Red Bull Toro Rosso Honda

1:31.564

 

 

17

Romain Grosjean

Rich Energy Haas F1 Team

1:31.626

 

 

18

Lance Stroll

SportPesa Racing Point F1 Team

1:31.726

 

 

19

George Russell

ROKiT Williams Racing

1:32.789

 

 

20

Robert Kubica

ROKiT Williams Racing

1:33.205

 

 

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