F1 | Analysis of free practice in France: Alpine and Alonso in great shape, Ferrari question mark

Having concluded free practice for the French Grand Prix, which saw Max Verstappen ahead of everyone by just eight thousandths of a second over Valtteri Bottas, let's analyze in detail what happened in today's second session, in particular on the race pace simulations. First of all, let's remember Pirelli's choices for this weekend: C2, C3 and C4 are the compounds brought to Le Castellet, hard, medium and soft respectively. The degradation of the tires at Paul Ricard is very important, which usually puts the softer compounds to the test, difficult to digest with a full tank of fuel, in fact the mid-ranking teams usually prefer not to qualify for Q3 and have free choice for Sunday instead finishing in the fifth row but forced to start on the soft tires. Things don't seem to change this year either, but let's proceed in order.

As written before, Verstappen and Bottas are divided by eight thousandths, with the Mercedes Finn unable to improve on the soft tyres, and therefore the time set was on the medium tyres. A good result, considering the different compound, but it seems that the C4s struggle to get to the end of the lap if not well managed, and this could be decisive in qualifying tomorrow. We also remember that Valtteri has at his disposal from this weekend the chassis used by Hamilton in the first five races, while the Briton has that of his teammate from Imola to Baku.

Race pace question: as you can see from our table, the leaders are unlikely to start on the soft tyres, provided they manage to qualify on another tire in Q3. Bottas tried this compound initially, but switched to medium and recorded excellent times, faster overall than those of Verstappen and Hamilton, with the Dutchman looking a little more comfortable than his championship rival. In short, everything seems to have returned to normal, with Red Bull and Mercedes favorites for pole and victory. The fight behind the top teams is very interesting: McLaren, as always on Fridays, never shows the real potential of the car, while Alpine seems to have a completely different opinion, which with Alonso and Ocon was very positive throughout the day, not just on the lap fast but also in race pace. Here we only took Alonso's stint (placed better than Ocon) and with the hard tyres, a compound tested a lot by the Spaniard today he put in a very interesting long run, almost replicated by Leclerc, a little more inconsistent due to the traffic and even with fewer steps. The laps of Gasly and Norris demonstrate how the soft tires are a plague for those who decide to start with that compound. Sainz, however, was a little more in difficulty, both on the flying lap and on the race pace.

Ultimately, Alpine is very much on the ball, with Ferrari, McLaren and AlphaTauri immediately behind at least in the simulations, then the weekend will be able to tell us something completely different as always, also paying attention to the weather conditions, with the rain which on Sunday could upset everything. Aston Martin to be postponed after the excellent tests in Monaco and Baku.