Zarco takes astonishing home MotoGP win in mad wet race
MotoGP

Zarco takes astonishing home MotoGP win in mad wet race

by Valentin Khorounzhiy
5 min read

Home hero Johann Zarco took a famous French Grand Prix win at Le Mans for himself and LCR Honda, winning a crazy race dictated by intermittent rain.

Marc Marquez, who had dominated much of the weekend, had no answer to Zarco - but now holds a 22-point lead in the standings as his main title rivals faltered badly.

Leading finishers
1 Johann Zarco
2 Marc Marquez
3 Fermin Aldeguer

The delirious early laps

As forecast, rain picked up right before the start time, leaving the whole grid trapped on the grid on slicks and forced to tiptoe their way around the formation lap - which immediately devolved into a bit of a mess as a good half of the field didn't stay on track at the Dunlop chicane.

Predictably, every single rider pitted for wets at the end of that formation lap, forcing an aborted start and a quick restart procedure, with one lap taken off the race distance.

Yet, ironically, that stoppage only served to make many riders change their minds as the rain faded - and, while Aprilia tester Lorenzo Savadori was the only rider to head out on slicks for the restart procedure, many more riders quickly felt he'd had the right idea and pulled into the pits before the second formation lap.

This didn't necessitate another aborted start, but it meant a cavalcade of double long-lap penalties - including for all of the front row starters - under the new start rules implemented from earlier this week in response to the Circuit of the Americas start chaos in March.

Somehow, that too wasn't the biggest source of chaos - because shortly after the race finally got underway the rain picked up again.

Before slicks became totally untenable, poleman Fabio Quartararo yielded the lead to Marc Marquez off the line, then retook it, built a lead, served his first long-lap and crashed in tandem with Brad Binder at the Raccordement corner, seemingly the wettest part of the track.

It left the Marquez brothers scrapping for position out front with rookie Fermin Aldeguer, and as the Marquezes came in for a change to wets, Aldeguer suddenly found himself with a lead of double-digit seconds.

But he too had to come in the lap after, suddenly handing a massive lead to Zarco.

Zarco in control

The home hero had been one of the few riders - with Pecco Bagnaia, Jack Miller, Alex Rins, Marco Bezzecchi, Luca Marini, Miguel Oliveira and Takaaki Nakagami - not to waver over (re)starting on wet tyres on a drying track, which was eventually proven the correct decision.

Bagnaia didn't get to benefit - he got barged into by Enea Bastianini while coming in gingerly into the Dunlop chicane, crashing and causing Joan Mir to crash, too, with Zarco actually forced off track and losing lots of ground.

But this proved immaterial in the grand scheme of his race, because among those on his same strategy Miller crashed while Marini, Bezzecchi and Rins all abandoned their initial strategies by pitting for slicks, before having to swap back to their wet-tyre bikes again.

Once all the pitstops and bike changes shook out, Zarco found himself with a big lead over Oliveira, and once Marc Marquez overtook Oliveira, Zarco's buffer had ballooned further, to 8.4s.

And it only grew from there as, in a race perhaps reminiscent of the 2016 Dutch TT won by Miller, Marquez seemed mindful of his championship aspirations in accepting second place.

At the finish, Zarco beat him by nearly 20 seconds, crossing the finish line to the roar of a raucous French crowd and giving Honda its first win since the April 2023 Austin race - also won by LCR, with Alex Rins that time.

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Another twist

As rain intensified further in the closing stages of the race, the Marquez brothers looked set to consolidate another double podium - but Alex lost the rear through the Dunlop chicane.

The bike made a heavy impact with the ground, but was somehow intact enough for Alex to remount, rejoin in sixth and fight off Honda wildcard Nakagami. But just as sixth looked assured, he crashed again, this time losing the front sharply at Garage Bleu and this time exiting the race for good.

His misadventures had promoted Pedro Acosta into a podium position, with Acosta, Maverick Vinales and Aldeguer all working their way past a fading Oliveira.

But Aldeguer's late-race turn of pace was much more formidable than that of the KTMs (running wet medium rears against the wet softs of those around them). He made light work of Vinales and was routinely over a second a lap quicker than Acosta in the final stages, finally cruising past his former Moto2 rival exiting La Chapelle.

It marked Aldeguer's first grand prix podium, a day after his first-ever sprint podium.

Rest of the field

Acosta still salvaged a solid fourth in what was his first race after arm pump surgery, with Vinales fifth and Nakagami sixth - an unheard-of result for a wildcard in this MotoGP season.

Raul Fernandez's dreadful-so-far 2025 flickered into life with seventh, even though he finished 70 seconds back from the winner. He was 0.061s off surrendering the position to Fabio Di Giannantonio on the final lap.

Aprilia tester Savadori, riding in relief of Jorge Martin, posted his best-ever MotoGP finish in ninth place, with Fernandez's Trackhouse Aprilia team-mate Ai Ogura making up an Aprilia 8-9-10.

Bagnaia was last of the finishers in 16th, trundling around a lap down after his crash in the hope of picking up an attrition-dicated point or two, and has now dropped to 51 points off the championship lead.

In addition to the aforementioned incidents, there were crashes for Bastianini, Bezzecchi, Franco Morbidelli - and Oliveira, whose bid for a strong points haul in his first grand prix back from a long injury absence came undone with a Raccordement high-side.

Results

1 Johann Zarco (LCR Honda)
2 Marc Marquez (Ducati)
3 Fermin Aldeguer (Gresini Ducati)
4 Pedro Acosta (KTM)
5 Maverick Vinales (Tech3 KTM)
6 Taka Nakagami (Honda)
7 Raul Fernandez (Trackhouse Aprilia)
8 Fabio Di Giannantonio (VR46 Ducati)
9 Lorenzo Savadori (Aprilia)
10 Ai Ogura (Trackhouse Aprilia)
11 Luca Marini (Honda)
12 Alex Rins (Yamaha)
13 Enea Bastianini (Tech3 KTM)
14 Marco Bezzecchi (Aprilia)
15 Franco Morbidelli (VR46 Ducati)
16 Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati)
DNF Alex Marquez (Gresini Ducati)
DNF Miguel Oliveira (Pramac Yamaha)
DNF Brad Binder (KTM)
DNF Jack Miller (Pramac Yamaha)
DNF Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha)
DNF Joan Mir (Honda)

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