France actually did follow in the Dreadnought race, as good as possible, as her own industrial capabilities were much less advanced, than the ones in the UK and Germany especially. France was a bit hampered by the less efficient shipyards and her generally smaller capital ship's as these had to make use of existing infrastructure, preventing the construction of completely new, much larger ships, than the ones around the 20,000 ton size. Therefore and because of the less advanced status of the yards, ships took quite a while to get completed and therefore could not numerically rival the British.
France was also hampered that she had just started the six ship strong Danton type semi Dreadnought, which was the first capital ship in France to be equipped with turbines, but still featured a mixed calliber armament. These ships had been ordered in 1907 and took untill 1912 to be completed, by which time the superdreadnought type was afloat already. The 1908 order for the Courbet class dreadnought too was not in service untill the start of 1914, so France always lagged behind the competition of the Naval superpowers in both UK and Germany and to a lesser sense the USA and Japan as well. (who were not European/ Mediteranean powers, so not mentioned by France at all.)