French MotoGP delayed by sudden rain, remains flag-to-flag

The start of the 2020 French MotoGP has been delayed after a sudden downpour at Le Mans just minutes before lights out threw another potential curveball into this 2020 MotoGP World Championship.

With riders already battling against cooler than usual temperatures for a MotoGP race, the consequence of the French MotoGP being shifted from May to October on the rescheduled calendar, the weather turning to rain at a crucial moment is an added challenge.

Happening just 3mins before the scheduled start, organisers brought the bikes back into the pit lane but will be adopting a quick restart under wet conditions, essentially allowing teams to change the tyres to wet but adopting flag-to-flag so that they will need to change bikes if the weather dries enough in the race,.

The new set of circumstances adds another fascinating element to a crucial race that sees Fabio Quartararo start from pole position and his closest title rival Joan Mir down in 14th.

However, as this is the first wet race to start since Valencia 2018, there are many on the grid yet to have started a MotoGP race like this.

This includes both Quartararo and Mir, along with the likes of Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati), Brad Binder (KTM), Miguel Oliveira (KTM) and Alex Marquez (Honda), though they did get an idea of conditions on Friday when they completed FP1 in the wet and FP2 in damp to dry conditions in FP2.

Bradley Smith was quickest in the wet of FP1, with Jack Miller topping FP2

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