In the mad hunt of France, Max Verstappen took his World Cup opponent Lewis Hamilton by surprise and expanded the Formula 1 lead.
After a tactical stroke of genius, the Dutchman grabbed victory in the Red Bull on Sunday in Le Castellet with an overtaking maneuver on the penultimate lap.
Hamilton had to admit defeat after a long lead and only crossed the finish line in second for the first time on this route.
In the overall standings, Verstappen is now twelve points ahead.
Third place went to the Mexican Sergio Perez in the second Red Bull.
Sebastian Vettel found himself back in the gray midfield routine again this time after finishing second in Baku, but at least got two more championship points as ninth in the Aston Martin.
Mick Schumacher gained further experience as the penultimate in the losing Haas.
In the two races after Formula 1 returned to the Circuit Paul Ricard, Mercedes had dominated at will.
Hamilton won from pole position in 2018 and 2019.
In the previous year, the French Grand Prix was canceled due to the corona pandemic.
This time, 15,000 spectators were allowed to attend every day - and they saw that Hamilton in particular could not keep up with Verstappen in training and qualification.
Team boss Toto Wolff called the second starting place for Hamilton, which was only possible thanks to a complete conversion of the Silver Arrow, “a black eye”.
Shortly after the start, however, Verstappen gave away his hard-earned advantage on the track, which Red Bull traditionally lacks.
In the first corner, the 23-year-old lost control of his car, lurched next to the track and had to let Hamilton pass.
In horror, the Red Bull crew dropped their clapping hands in the garage.
Not much changed after that.
Bottas started the pursuit as third, Sergio Perez struggled in the second Red Bull as fourth to catch up with the top trio.
Given the few opportunities to overtake on the unusually colorful track not far from the Mediterranean, the racing action was initially limited.
Vettel was able to improve by one place to eleventh right from the start.
After the strong performances in Monaco and Baku, the Hessian had to fight for points in midfield again this time.
For this, the four-time world champion had chosen a different tire tactic, started on the hardest rubber rollers in order to be able to delay his stop longer.
So he even worked his way up to fifth place behind the Mercedes and Red Bull before turning off to the garage.
Newcomer Mick Schumacher had been circling at the end of the field for a long time.
The joy of starting position 15 had already been clouded by an accident in the qualification.
In the race he fell behind in the first few kilometers in the losing Haas and was even overtaken by his Russian team-mate Nikita Masepin in between.
There was also a change of place at the top.
Mercedes gambled away with the strategy.
So, through an earlier change and a quick lap after, Verstappen was able to pass Hamilton when he came out of the pit lane.
“We also don't know exactly what went wrong,” the command post radioed to the perplexed Hamilton.
The series champion furiously tried to attack, closely followed by Botta's helper.
Driven by a fresh engine unit, however, Verstappen held its own against the Mercedes duo.
He defended himself nervously against the jostling Hamilton for laps, but that wasn’t tire-friendly.
“We can't keep it up to the end like this, that's for sure,” the Dutchman told his engineers.
Red Bull promptly changed tactics and brought Verstappen again to change tires.
Now the young star was chasing the two Mercedes drivers. Verstappen was significantly faster on the fresh tires, but there was a long way to go. Then Bottas helped with a mistake. Verstappen took it, in the 45th lap he only had Hamilton in front of him. And indeed, the tactic worked. Shortly before the end, Hamilton could no longer defend himself, Verstappen pulled away and triumphed.