page_title: 2001 French Grand Prix
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: 2001 French Grand Prix / Background
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours, vu entre les virages à épingle à cheveux «&#160;Adélaïde&#160;» et «&#160;Château d'eau&#160;» (côté nord-est).English: Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours seen between «&#160;Adélaïde&#160;» and «&#160;Château d'eau&#160;» hairpins.
context_page_description: The 2001 French Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held at the Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours, Magny-Cours, France on 1 July 2001 before a crowd of 120,717 people. It was the tenth race of the 2001 Formula One World Championship and the 51st running of the event as part of the series. The 72-lap race was won by Ferrari driver Michael Schumacher after starting from second position. Ralf Schumacher finished second for the Williams team with Rubens Barrichello third in the other Ferrari.
  Ralf Schumacher led the opening 23 laps before he made his first pit stop and Michael Schumacher assumed the lead after the first round of pit stops. His nearest championship rival David Coulthard of the McLaren outfit served a ten-second stop-and-go penalty on lap 32 for an earlier transgression of speeding at the pit lane exit. Michael Schumacher pulled away from the slower car of Ralf Schumacher who baulked his teammate Juan Pablo Montoya, until his second pit stop on the 44th lap. Montoya led laps 46 to 50 before he ceded the lead to Michael Schumacher, who maintained it to take his fifth victory at the French Grand Prix, his sixth victory of the season and the 50th of his career.
context_section_description: The 2001 French Grand Prix was the tenth of seventeen scheduled single seater races of the 2001 Formula One World Championship and the 51st running of the event as part of the series. It took place at the fifteen-turn 4.251 km (2.641 mi) Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours in the commune of Magny-Cours, Burgundy on 1 July 2001. The layout of the circuit provided an mixture of corners taken at low and high speeds with four long and short straights. It had a flat and smooth racing surface that had no single deformation around the track to disrupt the stability of the cars and the series' two tyre suppliers Bridgestone and Michelin brought soft compound tyres to maximise mechanical grip.
  Before the race, Ferrari driver Michael Schumacher led the Drivers' Championship with 68 points ahead of McLaren's David Coulthard (44 points) in second. Rubens Barrichello (26 points) in the second Ferrari was third and Williams driver Ralf Schumacher in fourth was one point behind in the battle for the position. The other Williams driver Juan Pablo Montoya completed the top five in the standings with 12 points. In the Constructors' Championship Ferrari led with 94 points, with a 41-point gap over their nearest rivals McLaren in second. With 37 points, Williams were in third position and Sauber (15 points) and Jordan (13 points) contended for fourth place.
  In preparation for the Grand Prix, the Ferrari team tested its chassis, the F2001, the only constructor to do so. The outfit conducted a six-hour and 45-minute shakedown session on 28 June at the Fiorano Circuit with their test driver, Luca Badoer, who drove 45 km (28 mi) to test the functionality of the car electrical system and also concentrated on launch control system practice starts. After an FIA World Motor Sport Council meeting in Paris on 27 June 2001, all of the eleven teams unanimously agreed that starting from this event, any driver who stalled his car on the grid for the formation lap would be barred from using the spare car. The rule was revised to state that any switch into the spare car could only be undertaken fifteen seconds before the commencement of the formation lap and it would avoid any driver incurring a pit lane start.
  Coulthard had won the 2000 French Grand Prix and spoke of his anticipation that McLaren would be within four-tenths of a second of Ferrari depending on the amount of tyre degradation, "So, in qualifying, again, unless the tyre that we have available to us works well on our car there, I don't think we have something in the set-up that we can change. It's probably something a bit more fundamental." He said that he did not want to be drawn into discussion over the Drivers' Championship and sought to extract his best performance over the rest of the season, " I concentrate on the future because you can't change the past. What we can influence is the future and we won't be affected by the situation that we are in." Michael Schumacher stated his acknowledgement that Coulthard was his main rival for the Drivers' Championship, and took a race-by-race approach, "The year is long and there are still eight races to go and I still have to calculate for David in particular. McLaren could still be very strong in Magny-Cours"
  Some teams made modifications to their cars for the race. The Renault engine manufacturer débuted an revised specification of its V10 power unit in the Benetton B201s of Giancarlo Fisichella and Jenson Button. This however did not increase the overall top speed of the cars and they remained slow throughout the race meeting. All of the primary teams did not bring any major aerodynamic improvements to the Magny-Cours track as the Prost outfit installed revised its suspension geometry and modified the bodywork of the AP04 chassis. The Sauber team mounted a new front wing on the C20 that featured an V-shaped wing to support it and the British American Racing (BAR) squad introduced a new rear suspension design that was developed by its partner Honda on Olivier Panis' 003 chassis.
caption: The Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours (pictured in 2009), where the race was held.
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