10 years ago… The last French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours

The Nivernaise campaign received the honors of the Formula 1 from 1991 until 2008. That year, competition was fierce between Ferrari and McLaren. However, it is the BMW-Sauber of Robert Kubica which leads the way before this eighth Grand Prix of the 2008 season, after his victory in Canada.

Saturday's qualifying session is historic. Kimi Räikkönen (Ferrari), outgoing champion, set the best time in 1'16''449 and offers a 200th pole position to the Scuderia. It will be nine years and the 2017 Monaco Grand Prix for the Italian team to continue this series!

The Finn, however, was the victim of an extremely rare incident the next day. Comfortably in the lead, the Ferrari F2008 hit with No. 1 slows down when exiting turns. The images show a straight sliding exhaust. The end piece ends up tearing off completely, destroying a piece of bodywork and a carbon-reinforced polyester plate in the process.

The condition of the exhaust outlet of Ferrari n°1 in the parc ferme... © J.-F. Galeron/WRI2

Kimi Räikkönen can miraculously continue, but at a reduced pace. His teammate Felipe Massa did not hesitate to overtake him on the 39th of 70 laps. “Luckily I had built a good lead over the others. A few more laps and I lost the podium », recognized “Iceman”, who finished on the second step of the podium. Felipe Massa takes the overall lead with two points ahead of his teammate.

Third thanks to an overtake on Fernando Alonso (Renault) at the beginning, Jarno Trulli (Toyota) then signed his best result since Melbourne (Australia) in 2006. “Since 2005, I have been going to every GP with an Italian flag at the bottom of my bag. I ended up leaving it in the bag. I was angry not to have him in the victory lap. I was making desperate signs for a spectator to pass me one! », he exclaimed then.

Lewis Hamilton completely misses the point. The Briton, penalized by 10 places on the grid for an accident with Kimi Räikkönen in the stands of Montreal (Canada), is trying to move up from 13th place. Unfortunately, he received a pit stop penalty for having exceeded a certain Sebastian Vettel (Toro Rosso) by cutting a chicane:

“I don’t think I did anything wrong when I entered the corner. I was in front on the outside and I couldn't turn without running the risk of getting stuck. I didn't get up because I had passed in front before finding myself behind the vibrator", he defended. The McLaren finished 10th and scored no points.

78 000 spectators had gone to the Nevers-Magny Cours circuit, compared to 72 a year before. TF000 recorded a score of 1 million viewers on Sunday, compared with the 2,18 million people in front of the first channel in France during the last Monaco GP.