Max Verstappen has won the French Grand Prix, after a seamless overtake of the Mercedes in the hands of Lewis Hamilton on the penultimate lap this afternoon.
After a race-long battle for the win, a smart pit from Red Bull for fresh medium tyres on lap 32 gave the young Dutchman the advantage in catching his closest competitor.
Hamilton and Bottas had both been on the team radio to say they were struggling with their much older tyres, and ultimately both lost positions in the final laps today.
The second Red Bull of Sergio Perez managed to overtake Bottas after getting a great run down the backstraight, to land the final step on the podium.
Speaking after the race, Max Verstappen said;
“At the beginning it was super difficult out there with the wind so one lap we had an okay balance, then the next lap you were sliding everywhere.
“When we made the first pit stop then you could as they were pushing me on the hard tyres behind but then when we made the call to do the two stopper, luckily in the end it paid off. We had to work hard for it, but very rewarding.”
Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton said despite losing out on the win today, he was happy with the team’s performance.
“Congrats to Max, he did a great job today. They just had the better strength all weekend”, he said.
“Considering we had such a difficult Friday, I’m really happy with today’s result.
“Of course we didn’t win and we were in the lead but I had no tyres left at the end and unfortunately lost the position. But still a good race.
“We’ve got to find some pace, that’s for sure. You have seen most of the time we lost today was on the straights. So we’ve got to dig deep, figure out where that is, whether it’s power or drag.
“We’ve still got a good package. I’m not really sure how we lost position today [at the first stop]. We didn’t know how strong that was going be or not [the undercut]. Obviously they had a good strategy and it worked really well for them.”
