French World Superbike: Race 1 as it happened

Bulega crashes out at the final chicane with Rea, as Lowes completes the first lap in the lead.

Lowes hits the front at turn five, and the slicks he's gone with definitely seems to be the choice.

Lights out in Magny-Cours, and Bulega has mae the holeshot ahead of Lowes and Gerloff.

The warm-up lap is underway in France. Definitely a dry line in places.

A mix of tyre choices. Scott Redding has a slick front tyre, Bulega and Lowes both have intermediates.

With the track drying out already before the start, a flag-to-flag, pit stop scenario is a definite possibility in this 21-lapper.

After the rain this morning, it's still wet at Magny-Cours, although it seems to have dried out slightly compared to Superpole this morning.

Welcome back to Magny-Cours for live coverage of WorldSBK Race 1. We're about 10 minutes away from the start, with Alex Lowes starting from pole position.

French WorldSBK - Superpole Results

Chequered flag is out in Magny-Cours. Alex Lowes has pole position from Nicolo Bulega and Scott Redding. A miserable session for Alvaro Bautista, he's only 17th.

Gerloff moves up to fourth but still no one is within 0.7s of Lowes' provisional pole time.

Petrucci is back out on track. He's ninth at the minute but has three minutes to try to improve as the conditions seemingly continue to get worse.

Alex Lowes back to pole position. Track conditions are continuing to worsen, as Michael Ruben Rinaldi and Bulega are now both down.

Petrucci has got his bike back to the pits but there's a fair bit of work to do for the Barni team to get him back out with less than six minutes left on the clock.

Sam Lowes is the latest faller at turn five.

There's also been a crash for Tito Rabat at turn five as Scott Redding, then Nicolo Bulega moves to pole position.

Petrucci has crashed at turn five but rejoined, and it's now Michael van der Mark fastest on a 1:53.948    

The rain is continuing to fall in France as the first lap times start to come in. It's Danilo Petrucci who sets the early benchmark, but he's soon beaten by Alex Lowes.

The pit lane is open for a wet Superpole session at Magny-Cours. Pretty much everyone heading out immediately, only Brad Ray still in pit lane.

There's no Toprak Razgatlioglu in Superpole today, or in action for the remainder of this weekend. He suffered a collapsed lung in a crash in FP2 on Friday afternoon, leaving him unfit for the rest of the weekend.

Although the weather on Friday was dry throughout, and the track was dry enough for slicks in this morning's FP3 session, the track is now wet ahead of Superpole.

There were several crashes in the WorldSSP Warm Up session earlier this morning, indicating the difficulty of the conditions.

Welcome to Magny-Cours for live coverage of WorldSBK Superpole for this weekend's French Round, round eight of the 2024 season.