Ousted Petrucci stars as rain wreaks havoc for title favourites
The 2020 Motogp French Grand Prix was already a finely poised affair before the race was even under way. Eventual winner Danilo Petrucci said after qualifying third that he expected a 10-rider battle for the podium.
The consensus was that if polesitter
Fabio Quartararo could get the holeshot and deploy the blistering race pace he displayed in practice on Saturday, it was game over. If the Ducatis of Petrucci and Pramac’s
Jack Miller starting alongside could get the jump, then it was anyone’s game.
Then the rain came and washed Quartararo’s hopes of a home win away.
The Petronas SRT rider struggled in the wet FP1 on Friday, but the predicted dry weather for Sunday meant it was a worry he could put to the back of his mind. But as the skies above Le Mans opened moments before the race was scheduled to get going, Quartararo had to “risk a lot” with a wet set-up – based on what he’d learned on Friday – that he was yet to sample.
His wasn’t a bad start, but he was jumped by Miller and LCR’S Cal Crutchlow briefly, before chaos ensued at the Dunlop chicane. Valentino Rossi crashed his Yamaha, forcing team-mate Maverick Vinales and Quartararo’s nearest title rival Joan Mir on the Suzuki to take avoiding action and run through the chicane.
Out of the melee, Miller led Ducati stablemates Andrea Dovizioso and Petrucci.
The two works-team Demosedicis then swapped places, before Petrucci seized the lead at the Blue Esses section at Turn 11.
Quartararo engaged in a nice battle with KTM’S Pol Espargaro for fourth but struggled to get heat into his rear soft rain tyre and quickly plummeted to outside of the top 10 by the end of lap six.
This was Quartararo’s first wet race in Motogp – as it was for Mir, Tech3’s Miguel Oliveira, Pramac’s Francesco Bagnaia and 2020 rookies Brad Binder and Iker Lecuona on the KTMS, and Honda’s Alex Marquez – and happened to come at a critical point in his championship bid. Though he was bleeding points early on to Dovizioso, both Mir and Vinales were still outside of the points at this stage. The following 20 laps would be a true test of the
Petronas SRT rider’s resolve.
The Ducati trio at the head of the pack, Petrucci leading Dovizioso and
Miller, would be joined by a hard-charging Alex Rins on lap 11. The Suzuki rider was making the medium rain rubber work from 16th on the grid.
But Rins’ challenge ended on lap 20 when he crashed out of second, Miller’s a lap before when his GP20 expired. Crutchlow had crashed the lap before that, and Franco Morbidelli had also gone. The conditions were biting but struggling title challengers were being gifted points.
Petrucci was ousted from Ducati’s 2021 line-up before the season had even begun and he later admitted this gave him the feeling “nobody trusts me”. But in the wet,
you can trust Petrucci to produce the goods. After quickly retaliating against his team-mate when he briefly took the lead on lap 18, Petrucci’s advantage was over two seconds after Rins crashed.
Dovizioso, and then Marquez, would close this down to 1.3s in the latter stages. But Petrucci was unfazed, his second career Motogp win a point well proven to his doubters after a lean period in which a top-six result had eluded him since last July.
Few would have put money on Alex Marquez giving Honda its first podium of 2020, but it’s proof that he’s more than just Marc’s brother. KTM’S Pol Espargaro sealed the final podium place. Dovizioso’s soft tyres faded in the final 10 laps and he “almost crashed 10 times” but managed to secure an important fourth in his title bid.
Once Mir got heat into his tyres his pace was quicker than that of the leaders in the closing stages, but it proved not enough to beat Quartararo as they debated ninth on the last lap. Quartararo felt it was like a “fight for the victory”, and the two points he gained over Mir to open his championship lead to 10 points after Vinales sneaked through for 10th could end up making all the difference come the final round at Portugal at the end of November.
The races when you have to simply bank points as events work against you are the ones that often show the true measure of a champion. Arguably, then, the French GP is where Quartararo has firmly assumed favourite status in the 2020 title race.