Alex Rins finishes second, with Alex Marquez fifth on his first visit to Le Mans. Low temperatures and rain increased the difficulty of the French GP.
After a downpour yesterday, expectations were for a wet race this Sunday. In the morning warmup at Le Mans, the Moto3 riders had the chance to go out on wet tyres and prepare for the new conditions, but in the end the track dried out during the race. The varying grip levels produced numerous crashes for the lower cylinder class riders.
A lead group of Viñales, Folger, Rins, Marquez, Salom and Oliveira was quickly formed. The latter then crashed out in the early stages and Marquez was left on his own at around the seven-lap mark. He completed the rest of the race shaking off the attempts of Kornfeil to catch up.
Rins took the race with calm and decided to play a waiting game. Folger made a mistake in the second half of the race and was left behind by Salom –who was also unable to keep up with the pace set by Viñales and Rins. On the final two laps, Viñales increased his advantage slightly and was able to take a comfortable win by just over a second from Rins. Salom completed the podium and Marquez placed fifth. With this result, Rins lies third in the overall standings, 29 points off Viñales. Marquez moves up to eighth.
Alex Rins >> Audio
2nd at 1.264 sec.
“The race was very difficult, so both myself and the team are very happy with this result even more so as we came into this GP off the back of a crash last time out. It was hardest at the start, as the track conditions weren’t very good. However, halfway through the race Jonas [Folger] and Maverick [Viñales] made a strong push. I was still able to hold onto second and latch onto Maverick’s rear wheel. I couldn’t keep up on the final laps, but the important thing is that the result is still very positive. We are now turning our attentions to Mugello.”
Alex Marquez >> Audio
5th at 37.949 sec.
“It was a long and difficult race. I pegged onto the lead group at the start and thought I could stay with them, but a scare halfway through the race made me lose feel with the bike and drop down to fifth. It doesn’t matter, it was normal when I was having trouble to maintain yesterday’s pace. This is a very positive result after the crashes in Texas and Jerez –even more so considering that Le Mans was a new track for me. Now we focus on Mugello, which is another new track and somewhere at which we will try to continue working well and improving.”
