The 2021 French Grand Prix (officially known as the Formula 1 Emirates Grand Prix de France 2021) was a Formula One motor race which took place on 20 June 2021 at the Circuit Paul Ricard in Le Castellet, Var. The 53-lap race was the seventh round of the 2021 Formula One World Championship. It was the 61st time the French Grand Prix had been included as a round of the world championship since the inception of the series in 1950.
Red Bull Racing driver Max Verstappen qualified on pole position, ahead of the Mercedes team's cars of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas. A mistake by Verstappen at the start handed Hamilton the early lead, but Verstappen regained the lead following the first round of pit stops. The Red Bull team agreed to use an alternative strategy, bringing Verstappen in for a second pit stop and dropping Verstappen eighteen seconds behind Hamilton, who reassumed first place. Verstappen (who had also claimed the bonus point for fastest lap) went on to win the race after he overtook Hamilton on the penultimate lap, with the newer tyres enabling his car to go faster. Verstappen's teammate Sergio Pérez overtook Bottas late in the race to claim third place. The result allowed Red Bull and Verstappen to extend their respective leads in the and Championships over Mercedes and Hamilton.
McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo improved upon their starting positions to finish fifth and sixth. This allowed the team to move up into third in the Championship standings, passing Scuderia Ferrari, whose drivers both finished outside of the top ten points-scoring positions following issues with tyre wear. Scuderia AlphaTauri driver Pierre Gasly, Alpine F1 Team driver Fernando Alonso, and the two Aston Martins of Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll made up the rest of the top ten finishers. There were no retirements.
Background
The event, officially known as the Formula 1 Emirates Grand Prix de France 2021, took place at the Circuit Paul Ricard in Le Castellet, Var on the weekend of . The French Grand Prix returned to the calendar during the 2021 Formula One World Championship after the 2020 edition was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic; this was its 61st appearance on the world championship schedule, and the 89th edition overall. It was the seventeenth Grand Prix held at Le Castellet, one of sixteen different venues which have hosted the race since the 1906 French Grand Prix, seven of which have hosted world championship races.
The race had originally been slated for , but was ultimately rescheduled to following the cancellation of the Canadian Grand Prix and the postponement of the Turkish Grand Prix. As a result of these changes, the French Grand Prix formed the first of three races on consecutive weekends, with the next two taking place at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria. The addition of a fourth group of three back-to-back races to the already-crowded calendar received criticism, with concerns expressed over the workload and its effect on the mental health of workers who travel to the races. There were two people who worked at the event who tested positive for COVID-19 during the course of race week.
Attendance was capped at 15,000 spectators per day because of the COVID-19 pandemic in France. The large size of the venue allowed for social distancing measures to be put in place, allowing more spectators than other events in France during the pandemic. It had been planned that Romain Grosjean, who had suffered injuries at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix, would make a demonstration run for the Mercedes team at the event, and then test for them on the Tuesday after. The former was cancelled because the rescheduled race clashed with his Indycar Series commitments at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin; while the latter was postponed due to unfavourable quarantine requirements.
The circuit had been recently resurfaced and has fifteen corners, some of which had been reprofiled since the 2019 French Grand Prix. Changes were also made to the pit lane entrance. There were two drag reduction system zones; one located on the start-finish straight and the other between the seventh and eighth turns, on the first half of the Mistral Straight. The track is lined with large paved run-off areas. The FIA Formula Three Championship and the Renault Clio Cup held support races during the weekend.