French MotoGP: 125GP red flagged

The French 125GP has been red flagged and will now run over five laps after rain began to pour down on the Le Mans circuit.

Sergio Gadea took the lead into the first corner, whilst Bradley Smith seemed to go backwards.

Danny Webb’s team-mate Hugo Van Den Berg, Dominique Aegerter and Cyrill Carrillo didn’t make it past the first corner as they all came together in the gravel trap.

Scott Redding was the top British rider going into lap two in ninth place with Danny Webb 15th and a shaken Bradley Smith after his crash in warm-up down in 19th.

Gadea was still in the lead as current 125GP champion Gabor Talmacsi worked his way through to take second.

A charging Nicholas Terol then barged through to take Talmacsi on one corner and then take Gadea’s lead, although Gadea was not giving up easily and fought back to claim back first.

By the end of lap five Redding was in 11th, Smith 13th on the Polaris World Aprilia while Danny Webb was 17th.

On lap six Scott Redding’s race was over as he came together with Marc Marquez on the Repsol KTM and privateer Tomoyoshi Koyama was also involved. There was better news for Smith who was the fastest rider on circuit on lap six and had moved himself up to 10th.

Espagaro set the fastest lap on lap seven, just one place ahead of Bradley Smith while the second Blusens Aprilia Efren Vazquez was then out of the race as he retired to the pits.

Stefan Bradl took the lead on lap 10 as the battle for the lead went four a breast into one of the tight Le Mans chicanes.

Going into lap 11 Smith was the leading Brit in 10th with Danny Webb moving up a place to 13th. But the big battle was still that for the podium places with Bradl, Talmacsi, Gadea and Terol all within a second of each other.

Stevie Bonsey’s bad weekend continued as he crashed out on his Aprilia on lap 11 to leave Webb as the lone Degraaf Aprilia on track.

On lap 13 the wet flags were shown indicating rain on the Le Mans circuit, but the wet wasn’t going to bother Smith who had now caught up with the leading group, now lead by Spaniard Terol.

Esteve Rabat and Gadea ran wide, allowing Bradley Smith to move up into eighth with 11 laps to go. With a few light spots of rain falling the lap times were dropping off by about a second as the riders took it a little steadier to avoid crashing out.

Joan Olive was the leader on lap 15 as Takaaki Nakagami crashed out of the race as the rain really started to fall heavily. And as this happened the red flags were brought out to stop the race as it was deemed to be unsafe for the riders.

With the race not yet reached the two thirds distance a result could not be declared and so the first race will now be used to form the grid of a second much shorter race with Joan Olive now the pole man.

This was not a chance for Scott Redding to restart unfortunately as only riders classified when the red flags came out could go back to start the second part.

The rules of the 125GP also state that if a race is red flagged before the two thirds distance, it shall be ran as a separate race up to the 66% mark with the results from the first part not actually meaning anything. As the riders were on lap 15 and the two thirds was due to be 16 laps, this would have meant a race of two laps but the rules state a minimum of five laps must be run.