Monegasque Charles Leclerc (Ferrari), who won two Sundays in Austria, will try to confirm his readiness to fight for the title at the French Grand Prix, the twelfth of this weekend’s Formula One World Championship. circuit Paul Ricard Le Castellet; here he has to deduct points from Dutch Max Verstappen (Red Bull), who is the clear leader of the championship.

Leclerc, 24, knocked Verstappen of the same age down to second place in his team’s half.Seven-time British world champion Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) seemed to smooth the course a bit with his third podium finish in a row. He did this in Spielberg’s Red Bull Ring, where the Mexican was abandoned. Sergio Perez ‘Mad Max’ comrade and Monegasque’s Ferrari colleague Carlos Sainz, whose engine was on fire and aiming for second place; in a race where the other Spaniard, double Asturian world champion Fernando Alonso (Alp), fell victim to misfortune before finishing tenth.

Whatever happens with Paul Ricard, Verstappen, the winner of the sprint test in Austria, determined that the qualifying rounds, which also distributed the points among the top eight, would lead France.. The Dutchman continues to lead the championship with 208 points, 38 points, 38 more than ‘Checo’ second, now third and third with 151 points than Leclerc.

Having just won his first F1 victory at Silverstone (England), Sainz scored the British Grand Prix a day after signing his first pole position in the premier division. failed to maintain a winning streak; however, he is in fourth place in the championship with 133 points.

With his third victory of the year in Styria, Leclerc will have to try to cut as much as he can – if Ferrari does not experience new endurance problems – the advantage of the new Dutch sports idol; he is also leading the Producers World Cup with ‘Checo’. With 359 points, 56 points more than ‘Scuderia’; and with over 122 Mercedes winning the last eight tag team titles and still a far cry from what it was in past seasons, it seems to be slowly regaining its rhythm.

After the World Cup halfway point on the beautiful Austrian circuit, The second half of a competition scheduled for 22 races begins in Francewhich will close on 20 November in Abu Dhabi; and he will play the final test before the holiday break at the Hungaroring on the outskirts of Budapest, which hosts the Hungarian Grand Prix next weekend.

Paul Ricard is a 5,842 meter track with long straights and 15 bends. -nine to the right and six to the left-, some very technical and high-speed, and with two DRS zones before the first and eighth; 53 laps are scheduled for next Sunday to complete a 309.6 kilometer route.

Mistral plain broken with a ‘chikan’ Reducing entry speed on Signes, one of the fastest corners in all World Championships.

Free practice, which will be completed on Saturday, will begin this Friday; Hours before qualifying, he will organize the grid for the twelfth race of the year, again in the usual format – three laps. Tire management will be vital in a Grand Prix where high temperatures are expected.

On dry ground, on the Le Castellet circuit, a track where a lot of overtaking is expected – especially at the entrances of Turns 1 and 8, where the two DRS zones begin – it will roll with tires in the mid-tread range. , C2 -hard, recognizable by white stripe-, C3 -medium, yellow stripe- and C4 -soft, red-.

In Austria, where he had been experiencing high voltage for several minutes, his car, unsecured on an adjacent ramp, began to burn violently before he could finally get out of the car and the commissioners put out the fire. Sainz lost options to fight for World Cup -75 points behind Verstappen- but the talented Madrid driver reminded that his performance has always improved significantly in the second half of his season.

‘Checo’ had to relinquish second place in competition to Leclerc, after retiring for the second time in the last three races; therefore, he is particularly interested in reversing his chances at Paul Ricard, where he finished third last year in a race won by his Dutch teammate. “I’m still fighting for the World Cup, so it’s also important personally not to lose any more points,” said the brave Guadalajara driver. “I took my second podium with the team in France last year and I can’t wait to repeat that.”

Alonso has one of his 32 wins in Francedespite having done it at Magny Cours; again with Renault in 2005, the year of his first championship, which he would reaffirm a year later.

two sundays ago double Asturian world champion once again a victim of bad luck. His car didn’t start and he couldn’t compete in the sprint qualifiers, so he entered the race from the back of the grid. And just as he was about to complete another big comeback, he had to repeat a ‘pit stop’ because the left front tire was out of alignment; so he finished tenth, then – without the double stop – he could have been sixth.

Fernando is in tenth place at the World Championship with 29 points, where Alpine is battling for fourth place in the constructors’ championship, where he has the same points as McLaren but is fifth: 81.

A week after scoring his first point in F1 by finishing eighth at Silverstone (England), Red Bull confirmed his progress in the Ring by finishing sixth with Germany’s Haas. Mick Schumacher Son of seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher: His eight victories in France – in a Grand Prix reaching its sixty-second edition – are like no other.

‘Kaiser’ takes all eight wins on French soil at Magny CoursWhere it was run many times between 1991 and 2008 – alternating with other tracks – and continuously.

Before and since the brace that existed between 2009 and 2017, when a test that recovered in 2018 was not discussed, and since then – the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, except in 2020, when it was suspended – it houses Paul. Richard. A track in 2019 where Lewis Hamilton repeated the previous year’s victory; and where he won his first title last year on his way to Verstappen.