Already, last year, the French Grand Prix at Le Mans stood out for its record number of crashes during the 2020 season, around a hundred, far ahead of Barcelona (64), Misano (61) and Valencia (61). Of course, this had nothing to do with the layout of the French circuit or its recently resurfaced surface, but was directly linked to the fact that the Bugatti circuit had hosted the only races of the year declared WET.
The fault therefore lay with the weather which, whether a matter of bad luck or the date, had decided to use the same tones of gray and humidity this year.
The same causes often producing the same effects, we had a clear feeling from Friday that Le Mans was once again going to stand out in terms of bruises among the drivers and fairing bills among the teams...
In fact, no less than 44 falls were reported Friday evening, compared to 38 last year, and without counting those suffered in MotoE and the Northern Talent Cup. These losses of control were distributed between 21 for Moto3, 13 for Moto2 and 10 for MotoGP.
Saturday then saw 33 falls, including 18 in Moto3, 6 in Moto2 and 9 in MotoGP.
There, we felt that the 100 mark reached last year was going to be crossed, since the weather forecast did not anticipate any improvement. And this was the case, with no less than 40 falls on Sunday, distributed between 12 in Moto3, 17 in Moto2 and 11 in MotoGP.
In total, Le Mans therefore heard the unpleasant but characteristic noise of the fairings on the asphalt 117 times, compared to 67 in Jerez, 47 in Portimao, 37 in Qatar 1 and 27 in Qatar 2.
To try to avoid this, there is regular talk of swapping the French Grand Prix and the Italian Grand Prix at Mugello, two weeks later, but the merits of this idea have not been proven and until at present this does not seem to be in keeping with the times...
Nowadays, Aleix Espargaró, Pol Espargaró and Álex Márquez share the sad crash record in MotoGP this year with 7 units each, a figure exceeded by one notch by Héctor Garzó in Moto2 and only approached as closely as possible by five riders in Moto3, Niccolò Antonelli, Xavier Artigas, Andi Farid Izdihar, Tatsuki Suzuki and Kaito Toba.
Photo credit: MotoGP.com
