F1 LIVE: Lewis Hamilton tips ‘smooth-sailing’ Max Verstappen to defend Formula 1 title after French Grand Prix victory

Charles Leclerc said he does not deserve to be crowned Formula One world champion after he crashed out while leading Sunday’s French Grand Prix. Max Verstappen took advantage of Leclerc’s catastrophic demise to race to his seventh victory of the season and extend his title lead over his Ferrari rival from 38 to 63 points.

Leclerc could be leading this season’s title race but for a catalogue of mechanical and strategical mistakes, as well as driver errors in Imola, and now in the south of France after he lost control through Turn 11 on lap 18 of 53.

“I feel like I am performing at the highest level of my career, but there is no point in performing at a high level if I make those mistakes,” said Leclerc, 24. “I lost 25 points here as it was likely I was going to win, and seven in Imola because of my mistake. So at the end of the year if there are 32 points missing then I know it has come from me, and I did not deserve to win the championship. I know I need to get on top of things if I want to be a world champion.”

Leclerc’s challenge appeared to be back on track after he built on his commanding win a fortnight ago in Austria with pole position. The Monegasque then sped away from his marks before keeping Verstappen at bay before the Dutchman stopped for fresh tyres. But the race turned on its head when Leclerc’s scarlet machine slammed into the barrier.

Max Verstappen admits his 62-point Championship lead is “bigger than what it should be” after Charles Leclerc’s retirement at the French Grand Prix. Having held off an early challenge from Verstappen at Circuit Paul Ricard, Leclerc pushed too hard and crashed on lap-18, blowing an opportunity to cut the world champion’s lead at the top of the standings.

Verstappen then cruised to a seventh victory of the season ahead of Lewis Hamilton, extending his lead ahead of the final race before the summer break, in Hungary this weekend. Despite the healthy advantage, Verstappen said after the race that Budapest will be a “struggle” for Red Bull and is refusing to get carried away despite his lead after 12 races.

“Of course, it’s a great lead but a lot of things can happen and I just want to stay focused; we need a lot more good results, a lot more one-lap pace,” Verstappen said. “The next race is Budapest, and I think that will be a bit more of a struggle for us, where I think Ferrari is going to be really, really quick. It’s all about scoring points every single race, even when it’s not your race.

“From our side, we know that we have to find, especially over one lap, quite a bit of performance. We’ll be working on it. It’s still important to always score points, even on a bad day, which we had in Austria.”

Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes team celebrated their best result of the season at the French Grand Prix. Hamilton finished runner-up in his 300th Formula One race, with team-mate George Russell one place back in third.

“Am I enjoying it more? One hundred per cent,” Hamilton said on Sunday. “The beginning of the year, was – not miserable, it could always be way worse – but from a driver’s perspective understanding this car was so confusing.

“Now we are in a position where we understand the car more, and that has given us a much more enjoyable drive. We still lack performance in some of those areas but we are slowly getting there. It is about constantly chipping away. Unfortunately we can’t take big leaps at the moment but who knows? Maybe one big leap will come and we will be right there.” Here we look at the impact Sunday’s performance will have on Mercedes’ season.

Hamilton was clearly delighted with his second place, hailing his team’s greatest result of a troubled campaign. But while Mercedes’ first double podium of 2022 provides cause for optimism, they remain a distant third to Red Bull and Ferrari.

Cast your mind back to April, three races in to the 2022 season, and Max Verstappen’s exasperation at the opening of his World Championship defence was writ large. However the solution, following retirements in Bahrain and Australia, was refreshingly crystal clear.

“I don’t even want to think about the championship fight at the moment,” the Belgian-Dutch said after his DNF in Melbourne. “It’s more important just to finish races.”

Doubling down on that philosophy, Verstappen has gone on to finish every Grand Prix since, winning six of the nine 25-point first-place cash-ins on offer. He has finished off the podium just once and a 108-point swing has seen Charles Leclerc’s lead go from 46 points to a 62-point deficit, following the Ferrari driver’s third retirement of the season in France on Sunday.

Experience of fighting for a World Championship is unequivocally a pivotal factor in any F1 title race. Rewind 12 months to Silverstone when Verstappen, in his first serious title challenge, crashed out on lap one and handed the momentum back to Lewis Hamilton when, in reality, any sort of podium points-finish would have sufficed in the grander scheme of a 21-race calendar.

Verstappen’s renewed focus on totting up points race-by-race highlights his growing maturity with that first World Championship under his belt. Early in Sunday’s race at Paul Ricard – likely to be the last French GP for some time with the event’s contract running out this year and no extension likely – the Red Bull driver was hot on the heels of Leclerc’s pacey Ferrari.

Yet despite consistently staying within the DRS zone, Verstappen played it safe and opted against all-out attack. The race – and the season for that matter – is a long game and memorable lunges for the lead pose a far greater risk than simply keeping the car on the tarmac. Duly, the Red Bull driver reaped the rewards.

Lewis Hamilton claimed his best result of the season at Sunday’s French Grand Prix – and then said he is ready to extend his Formula One career. In his 300th race, Hamilton started fourth and finished second, blasting past Red Bull’s Sergio Perez off the line and then gaining another place after Charles Leclerc crashed out from the lead.

Max Verstappen triumphed for a seventh time this year to move 63 points clear in the championship race. Hamilton finished 10 seconds adrift of the Dutchman – and is now 106 points off the title pace – but he was belated and exhausted in equal measure when the chequered flag dropped in the searing 33 degree heat.

It has been a troubling period for Hamilton in the seven months since his controversial loss at last December’s title-deciding Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – a defeat so sour that there was serious debate whether he would return this year. But with 18 months to run on his £40million-a-year Mercedes deal, Hamilton’s boss Toto Wolff said his driver could commit to at least another century of grands prix.

“That is a lot of races,” said Hamilton, 37. “Firstly, I want to be grateful to get to this point. But I still feel fresh, and I still feel as though I have got plenty of fuel left in the tank I am enjoying what I am doing and I am proud of arriving every day and working with this incredible group of people. I am enjoying working with the sport more than ever. I want to get back to winning ways and that is going to take time, but I am sure we will sit down at some stage and talk about the future.”

Nico Rosberg believes Ferrari need to make some “serious changes” after a day largely to forget on the pit wall at the French Grand Prix. With race leader Charles Leclerc crashing out on lap 18 after making what he admitted was a “mistake”,Carlos Sainz stormed through the field having started in 19th place due to an engine penalty.

Yet after being given a five-second time penalty for an unsafe release during the first round of pit stops, there was indecisiveness on the pit wall and in the cockpit over whether to pit again or take the penalty at the end of the race.

While battling Sergio Perez for third place, Ferrari ordered Sainz to pit and the Spaniard understandably responded “not now, not now” as he tried to overtake the Mexican. Having eventually made the pass, Ferrari played it safe and opted to pit Sainz, pushing him back to ninth before he eventually recovered to fifth by the chequered flag – yet 2016 world champion Rosberg could not believe what he was watching.

“I was shaking my head, like ‘what on earth are they doing there?’,” Rosberg told Sky F1. “First of all, he was in the middle of a huge battle out on track and his whole team wasn’t watching that anymore, they had their heads down doing their calculations about pit-stop times and they were talking to him in the middle of the wheel-to-wheel action there.

Lewis Hamilton expects Max Verstappen to cruise to his second world championship – describing the Red Bull driver’s path to probable glory as “smooth-sailing”. Verstappen racked up the seventh win of his title defence at Sunday’s French Grand Prix after rival Charles Leclerc crashed out from the lead.

Verstappen will arrive for this week’s Hungarian Grand Prix – the final round before Formula One’s four-week summer shutdown – holding a commanding 63-point advantage over Leclerc, the equivalent of two-and-a-half victories with 10 rounds left.

Hamilton, who is now more than a century of points behind Verstappen despite claiming his best result of the season with second place in France, said: “I am gutted for Charles. He has been doing a great job.

“But it is not easy to have that performance and pace and be able to maintain it. I feel for the whole team because I know what that can feel like. It is a massive gap to Max so that is pretty smooth-sailing for him in that space. But a lot can go wrong. I would just advise Ferrari to keep their heads down and continue to push.”

Hamilton’s Mercedes team celebrated their finest result of the season with George Russell finishing third to join Hamilton on the podium. It has been a turbulent campaign for the grid’s once all-conquering team, leaving Hamilton to draw parallels with 2009. Hamilton started that season in a deeply uncompetitive McLaren before pulling off a surprise win at the Hungaroring. Could history repeat itself this weekend?