With the controversy from a fortnight ago still very much in everyone’s minds, the F1 carnival heads to Southern France for the F1 2019 French Grand Prix. The Mercedes team once again secured pole position and 2nd with the fastest times in the qualifiers, but Charles Leclerc is getting more hungry as the season enters its mid section. Join us as we continue our coverage of the Formula 1 2019 calendar at the beautiful Circuit Paul Ricard and see who will earn a coveted 5 second penalty this race weekend.

Turn 4 of the first lap was where things got a bit unstuck for Racing Point’s Sergio Perez, as he left the track, dodged through the penalty zone, but managed to re-enter at speed gaining one position. The FIA stewards later gave him a 5 second penalty which felt all too familiar. Perez ended up in 12th place which didn’t award him with any points, despite putting up a great fight. Circuit Paul Ricard is famous for its blue and red lines, with the blue lines being a decent grip while the red being a strong grip that is supposed to slow the cars down when they exit the track. This didn’t really seem to be the case when Perez slid through the penalty zone and came out on top, so FIA will need to investigate just how effective the lines are and whether races will continue at this circuit in the years to come if no changes are made.

As the F1 cars began to pit to swap out their soft and medium tires to hard due to the heat of the track, Vettel said to his team that he would pit as late as possible in an attempt to gain a few places after starting at 7th. This gave us a brief moment where Vettel was hot on race leader Lewis Hamilton’s tail before pitting, though Hamilton never let up for the entire race, taking yet another win for the season.

Vettel pitted again with just two laps to go in an attempt to gain the bonus point for getting the fastest lap, which he was able to achieve on the final lap of the race after Hamilton also completed his fastest lap, so despite Hamilton winning the F1 2019 French Grand Prix by 18 seconds, Vettel still managed to take a small win away from the dominant Mercedes team.

Valtteri Bottas managed to keep Charles Leclerc at bay for the entire race, though the last lap saw Leclerc almost manage to make a move on him. While the live cameras were filming the battle for 2nd place, further down the order there was a group of four cars forcing each other off the track all over the place, with Australian Daniel Ricciardo gaining a position to finish in 7th place. Unfortunately this wasn’t the end of Ricciardo’s F1 2019 French Grand Prix, with race stewards giving him two 5 second penalties for forcing another car off the track and then leaving the track to gain a lasting advantage over another car.

You be the judge – See Daniel Ricciardo get pushed around as he fights for 7th place below:

When the checkered flag was waved, we once again see the final standings with Mercedes on top. Hamilton in 1st place and Bottas picking up 2nd. Leclerc put up a great battle to finish 3rd but the rest of the pack dropped off after that. A fairly uneventful race with barely any incidents throughout the 53 laps and just the one DNF for Romain Grosjean from Haas Ferrari who all in all had an awful race weekend. Check out the final, updated F1 2019 French Grand Prix standings: