Why Vettel's small error could have big consequences

The French Grand Prix was a mirror image of Canada two weeks earlier. In Montreal, Sebastian Vettel dominated while Lewis Hamilton struggled to fifth, but at Paul Ricard the roles were reversed. A zero-sum world championship game, you might say, but in France there was a significant difference.

In Canada, Hamilton had a lacklustre weekend, but at Paul Ricard Vettel was the architect of his own downfall. Sliding into the back of Valtteri Bottas's Mercedes at the first corner was the biggest mistake in the Ferrari driver's generally superb season.

With the initiative being passed between the big three teams on a race-by-race basis even five points, the difference between his result and the third place Vettel should have taken, could prove to be vital.

Vettel's was an honest mistake. Having taken advantage of the extra bite of the ultrasoft Pirellis he and Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen started on against the supersoft-shod Mercedes and Red Bulls, Vettel latched onto Hamilton's tail on the approach to Turn 1.

He realised there was no way past and attempted to take a conservative run into the corner while boxed in, only for Bottas to swoop ahead on the brakes to reclaim second.

Vettel locked up the inside-front wheel and, with the rear end sliding, clattered into the rear of Bottas, damaging his front wing and giving Bottas floor damage and a puncture.

"My start was very good, but then I had no place to go," said Vettel. "I tried to get out of it but in Turn 1 it got very tight. I was very close to Lewis in front and Valtteri tried to get his position back. Then I had no grip and lost the rear.

"The way I look at it with hindsight, I would have liked to have a worse start because then it would have been more straightforward and I would not be in that position.

"It did not feel that there was a lot I could have done differently and I tried to get out of it. You don't hit the brakes 200 metres before the corner just because you think it could be a bad spot to be in."

This wasn't a case of Vettel being over-eager and launching a stupid move, it was a small but costly misjudgement at an unfamiliar track.

Prior to Verstappen's stop, Hamilton was on average 0.318s faster

The result was Vettel heading to the pits under the safety car for a new front wing having also clashed with Haas driver Romain Grosjean at Turn 3. This effectively split the race into two parts - Vettel and Bottas fighting their way up the order from taking the restart 17th and 18th respectively, and the fight for victory - with the battle for third place falling between the two.

Hamilton was never under any serious threat from Verstappen, save for perhaps at the restart. With the Red Bull worryingly close after Hamilton launched back to racing speed, it seemed Verstappen would get a sniff. But the Red Bull's rear end twitched through the final corner and that gave Hamilton the advantage he needed to lead by 0.873 seconds over the line.

Over the next 19 laps, prior to Verstappen's in-lap, Hamilton was on average 0.318s faster.

That added up to a lead of seven seconds, enough for Hamilton to extend his first stint without fear of an undercut. It was a logical move to mitigate the risk of making two pitstops in quick succession, as this was another of those F1 races where rain is expected but it never comes.

Hamilton's lead was just over five seconds after he stopped to switch from supersofts to softs. Verstappen was on the same compound, albeit eight laps older, and while it would be overstating the case to say he threatened Hamilton either before or after the stop he did enough to prevent the Mercedes driver protecting his engine as much as he would have liked.

"I am always really conscious of the engine, so whenever I can I push a bit more and turn the engine down and make up for the time you lose by turning it down, I just do it in the driving," said Hamilton.

"Once I got in the lead, 10 laps before my stop I think I turned down a little bit and then I went back up because Max's pace was really good. Then, after the stop, I was able to run in quite a comfortable position. After that, I was never really challenged pace-wise."

Verstappen never got closer than 3.9s, six laps from home, as Hamilton controlled the pace. The gap at the line was 7.090s after Verstappen eased off, but the difference might as well have been a minute.

With Hamilton on top, it was essential Vettel recovered. His fightback was a rapid one having taken soft Pirellis Ferrari hoped he would get to the end of the race on. At this point, there was still a distant chance Vettel could still emerge as a victory contender, and certainly as a podium threat, if he could avoid losing too much time to the leaders, especially with the possibility of rain in the second half of the race.

After the first flying lap of the restart, Vettel was already 11.5s behind Hamilton, and by the time he took fifth place from Carlos Sainz Jr 14 laps later, he was still only 30s behind.

That was pretty good going considering every one of the 12 positions required a pass rather than picking up places when cars ahead pitted.

"I was surprised," said Vettel. "I think it was to do with quite a strong headwind we had. From the east end of the track to the west end, down the long straight. We were gaining a lot in the second part of the straights, which obviously made the tow quite strong. If the wind was the other way around, it would have been more difficult."

The more powerful tow, combined with the fact the gain from the DRS was consequently increased, made it easy to pass into the unpopular chicane that split the iconic Mistral Straight in two.

The drivers had complained about the configuration on Friday, even suggesting, rather optimistically, to Charlie Whiting that it could be removed this weekend, and justifiably they expected there to be little overtaking. But the combination of the conditions and the mixed-up order after the first lap proved them wrong.

Vettel's charge was largely without incident, although the attempts of his first victim - Fernando Alonso - to hold on to 16th place in the face of the Ferrari's attack around the outside into the Turn 3 right-hander resulted in the McLaren spinning.

Vettel then dispatched the Williams of Sergey Sirotkin at the end of the Mistral Straight for 15th. Brendon Hartley and Lance Stroll followed a lap later, with Vettel passing Sauber's Marcus Ericsson and McLaren's Stoffel Vandoorne on successive laps to run 11th after four racing laps.

Nico Hulkenberg, Sergio Perez, Romain Grosjean, Charles Leclerc, Kevin Magnussen and Sainz all followed. At that point, while Hamilton was out of reach, second-placed Verstappen was only 25s up the road. In the next few laps, Verstappen was very fractionally faster but on average only by a matter of hundredths before diving into the pits to switch to softs.

He emerged just ahead of Vettel, which was clearly Red Bull's intention even though Vettel still had a five-second penalty to serve, if not at the second pitstop he planned not to make then applied post-race.

Even then, with Ricciardo and Raikkonen both yet to pit, Vettel was in the right position to pick up third place on the road. Provided, of course, his tyres stood up.

"When I pitted, the boys said the front left part of the wing was damaged. A few laps later the right part broke" Daniel Ricciardo

Vettel did get ahead of both when they pitted, but never got into a podium position. Ricciardo stopped first, coming out three seconds behind Vettel after pitting on lap 28 of the 53. But he rapidly closed and, on lap 34 Vettel ran wide in the long Beausset right-hander, allowing Ricciardo to dive past him on the inside.

This was the same lap Raikkonen stopped, emerging eight seconds behind his team-mate. That gap disappeared quickly, and Raikkonen made an easy pass on Vettel to reclaim fourth. Vettel and the team discussed the possibility of making another stop, but with Bottas floating in the vicinity of 21s behind at that point, it wasn't possible to do so without sacrificing track position.

Bottas hadn't been able to follow Vettel through the field anywhere near as incisively. The Finn was battling a car that he descried as "terrible to drive", not only because of downforce lost thanks to floor damage but also the resulting impact on aero balance.

But in a hobbled car he did climb the order. The trouble was that his rubber was even more problematic than Vettel's and, partly thanks to a front-tyre vibration, the team opted to call him in on lap 39. That meant sacrificing places to Sainz and Kevin Magnussen - places Mercedes predicted he would reclaim.

As a consequence, this also allowed Vettel to make a stop without losing fifth place, even with the extra five seconds he was held in the pits. This effectively ensured he would finish in that position, as after the stop he was 35s behind Raikkonen, who was at that time focused on catching Ricciardo.

The Red Bull driver should have had third placed sewn up, but front wing problems compromised his race.

"When I pitted, the boys said the front left part of the wing was damaged and they think it happened just two laps before the pitstop. I started to get quite a lot of understeer all of a sudden," said Ricciardo. "I don't know if it was a failure or we hit some debris and that broke it.

"Already with the soft tyre we were struggling when we left the pits, and then a few laps later the team said the right part broke, so both parts identically seemed to break. We were slow because of that.

"We had a lot less downforce and were understeering, so Kimi was always going to catch us with that pace." Raikkonen moved into third on lap 47 of the 53.

With the top five positions settled, all eyes were on Bottas in the closing stages. His task was made more difficult when the rear jack failed at his stop, leading to an 8.7s pitstop that put him further away from sixth place than anticipated.

He had Sainz - who had leaped to third at the start thanks to being able to keep out of the way of the first-corner chaos but then inevitably slid back behind the leading runners - Magnussen and McLaren's Stoffel Vandoorne up ahead.

Bottas emerged from the pits with 13 laps to go 3.8s behind Vandoorne and quickly started to reel him in. Fortunately, the McLaren driver had yet to pit and duly removed himself from Bottas's path. Bottas was then 6.8s behind Magnussen, with Sainz a further 3.2s up the road. Bottas closed on Magnussen, but thanks to the deployment of the virtual safety car after Lance Stroll's heavily flatspotted and ageing front-left tyre blew when the Canadian turned into the Signes right-hander, he ran out of time.

Bottas did pick up one place, as both he and Magnussen were able to pass Sainz, who had suffered a Renault MGU-K failure five laps from home.

Shorn of 160bhp, Sainz was a sitting duck but still ended up eighth behind Bottas and sixth-placed Magnussen thanks to nearly two laps spent under the VSC that ensured team-mate Nico Hulkenberg and Sauber rookie sensation Charles Leclerc couldn't catch him.

Even a brief VSC can make a big difference to a driver's race. But up front, it was a combination of small factors that resulted in Hamilton and Mercedes dominating. "Marginal gains matter" was how Mercedes boss Toto Wolff explained his team turning around a frustrating Canada performance into a triumphant one in France.

On the stopwatch, based on a comparison with Hamilton's qualifying pace relative to Vettel in Montreal, this represented a swing of six-tenths of a second. That's wrapped up in a complex web of track characteristics, weather conditions, the gain of the new Mercedes engine specification, the return of the thinner (by 0.4mm) tyre treads to prevent overheating and set-up vagaries.

Given Vettel is usually a slow starter on a race weekend, working methodically from the start of Friday practice through to qualifying, you have to ask if practice three being effectively wiped out by rain played a part in things going against Ferrari?

The reality is that Mercedes was back on top in France. But with the fastest team changing on a race-by-race basis, the Silver Arrows was due a good one.

That's why the key to this championship will be acing the good days and making the best of the bad days. Vettel's first-lap error ensured his bad day was worse than it should have been, in doing so making Hamilton's good day into a great one.