The cathedral of Le Mans and on the left half of the picture some houses that hide the medieval-looking old town behind. A few kilometers south of it is the legendary circuit of the Bugatti circuit.

The Le Mans weekend is already eagerly awaited

After an extremely dramatic weekend in Andalusia, a similar thriller is likely to occur on the Bugatti circuit. For two of the most important figures in MotoGP it is their home race, although at the moment hardly anyone believes in the permission for spectators at the track. As in Portimão and Jerez, however, there will definitely be a few figures on the grid that can rightly be called onlookers. As in the previous year, this is probably an idiosyncratic interpretation of the so-called “Closed Door Protocol” of Dorna. The normal fans have to stay away, except for a handful of extremely privileged people. Hopefully the sporting events will make up for it and the starting position is extremely exciting.

Our mood from Le Mans, for one of us it was his 46th MotoGP race, which he attended. Fittingly, Valentino even made it onto the podium and a year later he impressed in qualifying, something we hardly dare to dream of at the moment. Almost two weeks before the French GP, the weather forecast was not very refreshing, but it was very similar for Jerez until a week before and it stayed dry in the end.. Unfortunately, the day before the first free practice session it looks really bad and rain is to be expected for the whole weekend.

Some figures from the past about the Le Mans Grand Prix

The most successful rider in MotoGP was Jorge Lorenzo. Valentino Rossi took 4 pole positions and won three times, plus a total of 8 fastest laps, which means that the old master is the undisputed leader, at least in this statistic. The first 250 cc winner in Le Mans 1969 came from Spain and drove an Ossa. In the same year, with Jean Auriol, a Frenchman even won the 125s, which his compatriot Guy Bertin imitated him on a Motobécane ten years later. In the past, the Le Mans race often took place in midsummer or autumn, sometimes it was also the turn of the season right at the start. The last double winner in the 250 cm³ and 500 cm³ class was the American Freddie Spencer on June 21, 1985. Two years later, the Italian Fausto Gresini won the MotoGP’s first Covid-19 fatality in the 125 category. When Repsol Honda Star “Quick Mick” Doohan won the 500cc race on July 17th, 1994, he had lapped the rest of the field with only 9 riders.

Due to the pandemic in the first Corona year 2020, Le Mans was the 9th round of the MotoGP, but already the tenth for the middle and smallest classes.
Point yield of the drivers in the past years in Le Mans and on average (see right column).. The orange year number at 2020 means in our symbolism the fact that the Grand Prix was a rain race.
Johann Zarco (Pramac Racing Ducati) – After a completely unsuccessful start, the local hero from Le Mans showed a fighting strong race and still it was only enough for 8th place. But the two men (Pol Espargaró and Stefan Bradl, both on Honda), he had clearly left behind him to the finish.

Circuit Bugatti- the traditional racetrack in eastern France

With only 5 left turns and 9 right turns, the Bugatti circuit fits very poorly to the problems reported by Marc Marquez after his race. Allegedly, the Repsol Honda driver even thought of a task with 8 laps to go, mainly because he said “I don’t have enough muscles and strength”. The problem for him is still as soon as it goes around to the right. His worst crash was in Jerez, but in a left corner. So we prefer to concentrate on the general aspects of the Le Mans track. For the opponents of Ducati it is reassuring that there is no long straight here either. The maximum is 647 m, with which the lightning-fast reds have to wait until Mugello in order to enjoy their strongest triumph. La Chapelle and Garage Vert are somewhat reminiscent of the almost 180 degree curves 6 and 13 of Jerez, but otherwise the characteristics of the Circuit Bugatti are completely different.

Our panorama photo of Le Chapelle, curve 6 in Le Mans, with the pedestrian overpass on the crest on the right, behind which the Dunlop chicane is located.

The world championship stand in all classes before the 5th round at Le Mans

Francesco “Pecco” Bagnaia (Ducati Lenovo) before the start of the Spanish GP – the world championship leader, like his team-mate Miller, benefited from Fabio Quartararo’s arm-pump problems in Jerez and thus took the lead in the interim ranking with second place. Two years ago he won the Moto2 race at Le Mans.

The schedule for the Le Mans weekend

On the Sunday of the Jerez race, we discovered that we had a terrible turnaround in our schedule for the GP in Andalusia on Sunday. In the end we had to laugh about it because it showed once again that control makes more than sense, and not just for texts in articles. This is also proven by many typing errors on other sites, as we have often noticed. Now it has just caught us again and this serves as an incentive to do better in the future. For the French GP, nothing changes for once compared to Jerez de la Frontera.

Unless otherwise stated, this applies to all images (© MotoGP).