French GP final practice and qualifying
By: Geoff Creighton
Summary
Status: Stopped
Here is our report from that session. Be sure to keep an eye (or two!) on Autosport and Motorsport.com through the rest of the day for all the key stories from the paddock after qualifying:
French F1 stars of the past Jean Alesi and Franck Montagny are on the grid to interview the drivers. "That wasn't too bad," is Hamilton's summary. "It feels great to be back in France, it's a beautiful place and we got a great response from the crowd."
Replays show Vettel ran very wide at Turn 6, and Raikkonen went straight on at the chicane. A messy Q3 for Ferrari there.
Q3 result: 1 Hamilton; 2 Bottas +0.118s; 3 Vettel +0.371s; 4 Verstappen +0.676s; 5 Ricciardo +0.866s; 6 Raikkonen +1.028s; 7 Sainz +2.097s; 8 Leclerc +2.606s; 9 Magnussen +2.901s; 10 Grosjean no time
No one is doing anything special on these final runs, only Bottas is improving very slightly but not enough to challenge Hamilton.
"I can't see my tyre temperatures," says Magnussen. Haas "has a problem with the sensors", but tells him to do what he did before.
Raikkonen had the track to himself for a while for what's turned out to be a wasted lap, but now Vettel, Sainz and the two Mercedes are out too.
Classic bit of "get that camera out of my face" from Grosjean as he stomps down the pitlane, crash helmet still on.
The session is back under way with a little over seven minutes left. Magnussen and Leclerc didn't manage to get first runs in before Grosjean's shunt.
The live GPS map had Grosjean off the road at Turn 5, which is why we initially got the corner wrong.
Order at the stoppage: 1 Hamilton; 2 Bottas +0.095s; 3 Vettel +0.178s; 4 Verstappen +0.483s; 5 Ricciardo +0.673s; 6 Raikkonen +0.835s; 7 Sainz +2.237s
Then Mercedes comes through and it becomes Hamilton first, Bottas second - but Vettel is still within 0.178s of provisional pole in third.
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