By ghost_726
With the first week of season 4 of the CRL completed, the F1 grid headed to the Paul Ricard Circuit outside of Marseille, France for the second race of the season. After the rookies dominated the streets of Monaco, would the veterans return to form in France?
Qualifying did little to answer this question, with the rookies and veterans almost perfectly alternating slots on the grid. The_562KING grabbed his second pole position in a row with a lightning fast time of 1:29.737. Ghost_726 put together a phenomenal lap late to grab the second slot on the grid as the only other driver to get into the 1:29s. Ellleventy11 put his Ferrari into P3, matching his qualifying performance from Monaco. P4 went to JurdiS09, narrowly beating PCC-Godly by .002 seconds. HAL9100 posted his best qualifying performance of season 4 in P6, while isiboy23 put his Aston Martin into P7. xJRACx put a second Ferrari in the top 10 by qualifying P8, while xINCIDENTx qualified P9, but was relegated to P14 due to minor contact with a Red Bull while both were in the run off area. KENNYHITMANHART grabbed the last spot in the top 10, giving the McLaren team a strong chance to grab points.
The battles in France were tight, but the results were largely the same. Through two races only 12 drivers have finished inside the top 10, and only four drivers have seen the podium. The_562KING claimed his second victory of the season, again going pole to P1. Meanwhile, PCC-Godly made another charge through the pack to finish P2 again, this time only 2.3 seconds behind the race winner. Ghost_726 and isiboy23 swapped positions from Monaco, with ghost_726 grabbing the final spot on the podium by holding off isiboy23 by .400 seconds, who put together a strong drive to rise from P7 to P4. JurdiS09 enjoyed a strong season 4 debut by taking the last spot in the top 5.
Team Mercedes put together another strong team performance, with HAL9100 finishing P6, while jmtitan10 put together an amazing drive to finish P7 after starting P10. Ellleventy11 salvaged points for Ferrari by finishing P8. But Ferrari will surely leave France disheartened as another solid qualifying performance of P3/P8 was squandered, with Ellleventy11 dropping 5 positions, and xJRACx failing to finish. KENNYHITMANHART capped a solid day for team McLaren by grabbing two points in P9, despite early wing damage. And the final spot in the top 10 went to xINCIDENTx, who put together a strong recovery drive from P14 and early wing damage to grab a point for the Haas team.
While we don’t normally comment too much on the battles outside the top 10, we had to take note of juzzzyb’s performance for Alfa Romeo. After qualifying P20, juzzzyb enjoyed a strong start, and a consistent race to rise all the way to P11, improving his position by 9 spots, and missing out on points by a mere 4 seconds.
With The_562KING again finishing P1, and PCC-Godly again finishing P2, they saw their point totals rise to 50 and 36, respectively. Isiboy23 and ghost_726 appear locked in an early battle, with both sitting on 27 points.
But the surprise of the season so far has to be the performance of jmtitan10. With a P6 and P7 finish to his name so far, he sits P5 in the standings and seems poised to lead the midfield battle. xINCIDENTx and ellleventy11 pulled even on 11 points after finishing P10 and P8 respectively, while HAL9100’s P6 and jurdiS09’s P5, leave them both a mere point behind. Meanwhile KENNYHITMANHART found his point scoring form in France to pull himself into P11.
On the team side, The_562KING’s win again gave Alpine the team win, and ensured that Alpine stayed top of the points with an impressive 50 points through 2 races. McLaren’s double points finish netted them 20 points, and catapulted them from P4 into a tie for P2 with Haas. Aston Martin remains in P4 after isiboy23 delivered 12 points for the team, while Mercedes double points finished saw them pick up 2 points on Aston Martin team to cut their gap to 7 points.
AlphaTauri’s 10 point finish got them on the board, but Ferrari’s 4 points were just enough to hold onto P6 with a 1 one point lead. Williams, Alfa Romeo and Red Bull all sit joint P8, yet to score their first points of the season.
Race at a Glance
Podium – The_562KING, PCC-Godly, ghost_726
Team Win – Alpine (25 points)
Pole Position – The_562KING (1:29.737)
Fastest Lap – guitarhero1234 (1:31.164)
Most Positions Gained – juzzzyb (P20 -> P11)
Driver of the Day – juzzzyb (10/19 votes) – After my worst qualifying to date saw me start in P20, I knew there was some work to do if there was any chance of points. When the lights went out, I got off the line super fast and gained 5 positions by turn 1 to put me into P15 and then picked up another 3 by the end of the first lap. From there I just tried to race as clean as possible for the rest of the race, and if not for a track limits penalty, I was very close to the points this race.
