Le Mans MotoGP: Fantastique Zarco makes the French sing

They say that winning your home grand prix is like scoring the winning goal at the World Cup final, but only one person on this planet knows what it’s like to win your home MotoGP race at Le Mans.

Because there’s nowhere better to do that than Le Mans, thanks to the vast and noisy crowd thronging the vast grandstands, built to accommodate the crowd at the circuit’s 24-hour car race.

On Sunday the 111,000 fans sounded like the best football crowd – singing football chants for winner Johann Zarco and belting out the Marseillaise time and time again.

Zarco has been in the MotoGP paddock for almost two decades, since he won the inaugural Red Bull Rookies championship in 2007. During his early years in grands prix he wasn’t a great talker and seemed to treat journalists with suspicion. (Not without reason.) More recently he’s shrugged off that somewhat dour persona to become the championship’s philosopher king, its Eric Cantona, always ready with a leftfield quote to brighten your day.

But not on Sunday. Quite rightly, the 34-year-old was overcome by the magnitude of his achievement – bottom lip trembling, fighting back the tears as he performed his traditional backflip in front of the stands that tower over the start-finish.

“I expected more tears – they are here but they are not getting out!” he grinned. “It’s very special – I can’t believe it’s happened. I race to win races, to be on the podium. I always push myself to get the best performance and I always trust that one day I can win.”

Zarco may have kept the tears from flowing but his parents didn’t. Remarkably, this was the first time his mum had visited a grand prix. Zarco had only asked her to be there because he wanted her to hear the French fans at full song. No one, not even the Zarco family, knew there would be good reason for them to sing louder than ever.

“It’s a bit strange because of the way it happened today,” Zarco continued. “I needed to control a lot and wait for the victory to come. I’m so happy because I love the history of motorbikes, so to write this line – to be a French winner of the French GP! – wow, that’s very special and I’m very happy for this.”

Only one other Frenchman has done what Zarco did on Saturday – in 1954, factory Gilera rider Pierre Monneret won the French 500cc GP at the Reims street circuit, 90 miles northeast of Paris.

Zarco didn’t only have the French crowd on his side, he also had the Le Mans weather behind him. Honda may have taken some big steps forward with its RC213V in recent months but the bike isn’t ready to win in the dry just yet.

Rain was exactly what Zarco and his RC213V needed. And perhaps his age – he’s the oldest rider on the grid – helped him through the chaotic preamble and early stages: the first start aborted after the entire grid ended the warm-up lap in pitlane to switch to their rain bikes, the second start following another mass bike change, to dry bikes.

Zarco was one of the few that didn’t change his mind during the second sighting lap. LCR Honda team owner Lucio Cecchinello’s weather app had told him that more rain was 100% on its way, so even though slicks seemed the right call at that time, they weren’t. That’s why Zarco had the courage of his convictions to stay with rain tyres, even while so many were going the other way.

But it all might have ended a few seconds into the race, when Enea Bastianini sent it up the inside at Turn 3 like a madman, taking out Pecco Bagnaia.

Joan Mir only just avoided the Italians’ disaster but missing them had the 2020 MotoGP champion collide so hard with Zarco that the LCR rider’s left hand slipped off the handlebar, the impact also smashing his switchgear. Mir fell heavily, suffering a fracture in his right hand.

By the time Zarco had ridden out of the Turn 3 gravel trap he was almost last and many riders might have thought their day was essentially over. Not Zarco. This was his 288th GP start, so he knows how to keep his head when all around are losing theirs: stay calm, don’t rush, let the race come to you.

“From there, it was: OK, don’t burn your rain tyres, take what you can take, you will see and I’ve seen it,” he added.

The first few laps were dizzying. All the riders that had swapped back to their dry bikes had to do two long-lap penalties, as prescribed in new rules, written following last month’s COTA grid palaver.

Then another sprinkling of rain. Marc Márquez was leading, chased by pole-starter Fabio Quartararo and Brad Binder, all on slicks. When they attacked the final corner on lap four, Márquez nearly lost the front, while Quartararo and Binder did lose the front, both clattering into the gravel trap. Turn 14 is always slippery when wet because its asphalt is polished by car undertrays during the 24 hour race.

Those crashes triggered another mass bike change during the next few laps, which put Zarco into the lead, on lap eight, only another 18 to go. He spent every single one of those laps teetering on the brink of a crash because the track was never fully wet, so it was greasy, which makes it difficult to find the limit without tripping over it.

The former Moto2 world champion had two big concerns: trying not crash and trying to go fast enough to keep Marc Márquez behind, so he was sat on a razor’s edge for the next half hour. Márquez did try to close the eight-second gap but soon realised that going faster than Zarco would be too risky, his Jerez crash still ringing in his ears.

“Without the mistake at Jerez, I’m 80% sure I would’ve crashed today, because I know myself!” the Spaniard laughed.

Once Márquez had settled for second and built a gap over brother Alex, who later crashed twice, Zarco was safe, so long as he kept laser-like focus and didn’t let his growing lead fool him into slowing down, because if you do slow down your tyres will cool down and you’ll most likely end up on the ground.

“It was a tricky race,” said Zarco after his second MotoGP victory, 19 months after his first, with Pramac Ducati at Philip Island. “We knew it was going to rain, so my choice was rain tyres. When the race started the other guys with slicks were faster but there were some rain drops, so I knew it was too tricky [for slicks]. Then I saw them crashing and going to the box, so I gained positions. Jack [Miller] was with rain tyres and I know he’s so strong in these conditions, but when he crashed I began to trust that I could do something good.”

Zarco’s victory was Honda’s first since Alex Rins won the 2023 Americas GP and doubly important for the Japanese manufacturer because it ended Ducati’s victory streak. Two weeks earlier at Jerez, Alex Márquez had won the Bologna brand’s 22nd consecutive MotoGP race, equalling Honda’s record from the 1990s. Everyone assumed Ducati would better Honda and make history on Sunday, but thanks to Zarco and the rain that didn’t happen.

Marc Márquez’s second position – the first time he’s finished a GP race this year without winning it – was hugely important. The previous day he had won his sixth consecutive sprint to retake the world championship lead from his little brother. His Sunday success and Alex’s crash takes him to Silverstone next week with a 22-point lead.

Factory Ducati team-mate Pecco Bagnaia had one of the worst weekends of his career. Struggling to magic the same speed as Marc out of this year’s Desmosedici, he crashed out of the sprint and then had Bastianini destroy his Sunday race moments after it had started. And Bagnaia would’ve been a good bet for the win, because he had started on rain tyres. Instead he rejoined the race to finish last, one place out of the points in 16th.