MotoGP

Rossi names three factors behind ‘nightmare’ Le Mans corner

by Valentin Khorounzhiy
3 min read

MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi has outlined why the left-hander at Le Mans’ Dunlop chicane is a “nightmare” for riders, after a number of crashes took place there during Friday practice.

The Turn 3 left-hander accounted for 19 of the 44 crashes across Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP during a mixed-weather day of practice, with five of the crashes coming in the fully dry FP2 for the premier class.

Though Rossi himself avoided a fall, he admitted it was a very stressful corner to go through, and offered an in-depth explanation for why that was the case.

“Turn 3 is a nightmare,” the MotoGP veteran said. “Every lap when you arrive, you are very worried. And for me there are different things, why it’s like this.

“First of all, it’s the first corner on the left, and you arrive after two corners on the right [and] a long straight. And especially with the low temperature the tyre is cold, so you don’t have a lot of grip.

“Second thing that has a lot of effect is – it’s not flat, but the banking is opposite. It’s negative banking [off-camber]. And this is a disaster for the bike because you arrive and you have to lean the bike on the left but on the negative banking it’s a big problem.

“The third factor, very important, is that this track is used by the cars for the 24 hours of Le Mans and the part that the cars use has less grip. Because the track is more under stress, the asphalt is more old. Because when you make 24 hours with 70 cars, for sure the track becomes old very early. So I think that there are these three factors.”

The lack of tyre temperature on the left side was a universal explanation for the multitude of FP2 crashes at the corner, which involved Fabio Quartararo, Alex Rins, Francesco Bagnaia and Aleix Espargaro – the latter falling there twice in the opening 20 minutes of the session.

“In the moment, this season, [I am] in a very high confidence, so I start, I try to push on my first lap, on the first split I was already coming in the [1m]32[s] lap, and then I crashed. I was too hot,” Espargaro explained.

“And then I took the second bike and immediately when I went fast I made a second mistake. I said sorry to my team because two big mistakes, and I think the only explanation is that I felt good, competitive, and fast enough from the beginning, but the track wasn’t ready to go as fast immediately.”

Notably, none of the rookies in the MotoGP field fell at Turn 3 or indeed at all, but they were also all towards the bottom of the timesheets.

“I approached this Turn 3 very slow,” said Luca Marini, Rossi’s brother riding for his VR46 Ducati team. “I just tried to pass that corner, because I know it is the most dangerous corner here in Le Mans – I was trying just to do my session and understand, take some information, some data to analyse in this dry condition.

“Tomorrow if it is dry I will push more – sector one is the sector I’m losing more [most time in] now.”

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • More Networks