Uralkali Haas F1 Team drivers Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin qualified 15th and 18th, respectively, for Sunday's French Grand Prix, Round 7 of the 2021 FIA Formula 1 World Championship at Circuit Paul Ricard.

Mazepin and Schumacher had to abandon their opening Q1 runs with Yuki Tsunoda's stricken AlphaTauri bringing out the red flags at Turn 2 just four minutes into proceedings. When the session resumed Schumacher subsequently banked a 1:32.942 lap with Mazepin clocking a best effort of 1:33.554. A late crash for Schumacher at Turn 7 brought a premature end to Q1 and the German's participation in qualifying.

Sitting 14th on the timesheets, and with the field forced to abort their final flying runs due to the red flag - including that of his teammate, Schumacher's best lap time was good enough to advance to Q2 - with the fastest 15 in Q1 progressing. However, the German was unable to participate in Q2 due to the damage sustained on his VF-21. Mazepin was out in Q1 with the Russian classified 18th ahead of Aston Martin's Lance Stroll and fellow rookie Tsunoda.

Red Bull Racing's Max Verstappen claimed his second pole position of the season and the fifth of his Formula 1 career. Verstappen's fastest Q3 lap of 1:29.990 beat Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes by .258 of a second.

Nikita Mazepin: "I wasn't entirely happy with the car. We have FP1, FP2 and FP3 giving you time to get into the groove and set your time but Q1 sometimes can be very different. Unfortunately, I didn't get my lap time done when it needed to be done and as fast as it needed to be. If you have two red flags in a session and it's that short, that's what happens. If you look at the statistics, things like this don't happen often but obviously when they do happen, Saturday night's sleep gets a bit interrupted, shall we say. It's just one of those things. The race is so long that you finish where your speed is, so let's see."

Mick Schumacher: "I pushed too hard going into the corner and that kicked out the rear. The car is very wind affected - I don't know if that would have triggered some extra oversteer. Nonetheless, we've managed to get into our first Q2 session of the year, so things brighten up and hopefully we can get more of those days in the future. There is damage to the car, how great we don't know yet. If everything is ok we'll start from there and obviously it is on paper, and that's what matters to me. If something happens, I've got 53 laps to catch-up. I'm optimistic that we see the light at the end of the tunnel. The team is getting more motivated every day, I am more motivated every day and those results prove that our hard work is growing."

Guenther Steiner: "It would've been a good day if we hadn't crashed on Mick's last run. We're still investigating the gearbox and if we need to change it or not. At the moment it seems we don't, so let's hope it stays like this as this would be the first time this year that we've got into Q2. Otherwise, nothing big to report as we just went on. Let's hope we can start from where we are now."

Check out our Saturday gallery from Paul Ricard, here.