Alex Rins: “I need to write a book” after wild French MotoGP

An “unbelievable” French MotoGP saw Alex Rins navigate a series of “stressful” decisions, bike swaps and tyre gambles at Le Mans.

Rins joined eventual home winner Johann Zarco in correctly choosing wet tyres for the restart.

But Yamaha’s lack of grip in damp conditions and the topsy-turvy weather soon saw Rins second-guess his decision.

“This was a race to put in the books,” said Rins. “For sure, I need to write all these things in a book when I'm retired! Because it was unbelievable - the stress, the decisions, everything!”

The Monster Yamaha rider explained that after checking the weather radar, he was “100% convinced” rain was coming and needed to start the original race on wets.

The rest of the grid agreed, with all riders piling into the pit lane at the end of the warm-up lap, causing an automatic delayed start.

But with the weather then improving, 13 riders dived into the pits again, this time to change back to slick tyres, on the sighting lap for the restart.

Meanwhile, Rins, Zarco and others stuck it out on wets.

“Like Zarco, Miller and the others, I was on the grid with wets and this was correct, but then we were struggling so much with our bike in the wet,” said Rins. 

“So I thought, 'Let's try the slicks' because the feeling was super bad. Super slippery, with zero grip.”

Rins pulled in to change to slicks, but the rain returned just a few laps later, forcing him back into the pits for a second time, changing to wets and returning in 19th.

“The problem was that I came in twice, one more time than most of the others [who started on slicks],” he added. “I tried to manage the race by staying calm, because it was very delicate to find the limit on track.”

Rins eventually climbed to 12th at the flag, aided by incidents ahead, and almost caught Honda’s Luca Marini.

“I tried riding different lines, and thanks to this, I was able to ride 1'46s laps. I recovered 16 seconds to Marini - I was just missing some laps to overtake him.”

But the M1’s grip issues in the tricky conditions were clear: “We have problems in the dry and when it's wet these problems increase… There is zero grip. The electronics cannot manage the low grip on the bike.”

Rins’ team-mate Fabio Quartararo, plus Pramac riders Jack Miller and Miguel Oliveira all crashed out at the same final corner, leaving Rins as the only Yamaha to see the chequered flag.