Winner: Johann Zarco
Just when it looked like his early-season smiles were beginning to fade – all the more so after qualifying down in a distinctly unpromising 11th – Johann Zarco produced one of the most memorable victories MotoGP has seen in years.
As Alex Marquez learned at Jerez two weeks earlier, winding down the laps with a comfortable lead in front of your home crowd is no picnic. Doing so on a slippery track is even more of a challenge. But Zarco harnessed his wealth of experience to seize a rare opportunity to slay the Ducatis.
In grabbing his second career MotoGP win, he also sent a perfectly-timed message to Honda’s top brass as they mull their factory lineup for 2026. Zarco’s desire to step up from LCR to the works squad was a talking point all weekend at Le Mans – but taking the independent bike to the top of the podium spoke volumes.
Fun fact: Zarco’s other MotoGP win also came aboard an independent bike – he was riding a Pramac Ducati when he won the 2023 Australian GP. Even if he never wins another MotoGP race, Zarco will have a fine brace to treasure for the rest of his days. What rider would choose anything other than winning their home race and conquering the mighty Phillip Island?
Loser: Francesco Bagnaia
Francesco Bagnaia has been hanging on to the leaders’ coattails for most of 2025. In France, it’s fair to say he lost his grasp entirely. Pecco came out of the weekend with zero points and a 51-point deficit to championship leader Marc Marquez. Having kept in touch mainly thanks to a couple of Marquez errors earlier in the year, the depressing truth now is that Marc could throw away two grands prix and Bagnaia still wouldn’t be able to surmount his points lead.
Friday looked promising, but on Saturday he just couldn’t perform in qualifying and would line up only sixth for the races – both of which were unmitigated disasters. His dry sprint lasted a little over a lap before he lost the front end at the Dunlop chicane and tumbled out of fourth place. The same corner poked him in Sunday’s sketchy weather, though this time it wasn’t his fault as he was punted off by 2024 team-mate Enea Bastianini on the first lap.
Pecco was actually on the ‘Zarco strategy,’ and might still have contended after picking up his bike, had a damaged shifter not forced him to swap machines after one lap. Going to the effort of finishing the race offered up no joy as he brought up the rear of the field a lap down – and missed the points by one spot.
Winner: Honda
Honda has been progressing all season, even knocking on the door of the podium at times. But for now, it still needs a crazy-weather race to topple Ducati. Le Mans is always a good candidate for one of those, and it delivered the ultimate opportunity on Sunday. Honda duly snatched it, albeit through Zarco and the independent LCR team.
The timing could not have been better for a manufacturer about to lose its win-streak record to Ducati. Zarco’s win means the Italians will need to start again from scratch and share the record of 22 victories with Honda into 2026 at the earliest.
There was more than just the win to celebrate, too. The odds of wild card Takaaki Nakagami finishing sixth would have been ultra-long ahead of the weekend, and no shorter when he qualified plum last. But he too grabbed the chance that the mixed weather presented and finished as the second rider on Zarco’s non-stop strategy.
It wasn’t such a rosy grand prix for the regular factory riders. Joan Mir very nearly became a villain when the Bastianini/Bagnaia crash forced him into Zarco at Dunlop on lap one. But, fortunately for Honda, it was Mir rather than the Frenchman who ended up on the floor. Lucas Marini, meanwhile, came home 11th.
Loser: VR46
After Franco Morbidelli and Fabio di Giannantonio mustered three podiums in a row on the stretch from Argentina to Qatar, the European season has not been kind to the VR46 team. Jerez wasn’t great, but Le Mans was a real struggle.
Morbidelli has gotten into a crashing habit since returning to Europe, and was at it again at Le Mans. He managed to make Q2, but ninth is his worst grid position of the season. An appalling getaway robbed him of any chance of sprint points on Saturday and then, on Sunday, he trailed home a lapped 15th after crashing once again.
Di Giannantonio lost all confidence in the front end early in the weekend and qualified way down in 17th place. He did race well, however, scoring seventh and eighth in the sprint and grand prix respectively. Still, he remains behind Morbidelli in the points table, offering some credence to Bagnaia’s claim that the GP25 is not really a step forward compared to the GP24.
Winner: Fermin Aldeguer
Gresini’s unobtrusive rookie has made remarkably steady progress since suddenly finding his form in Texas. Fermin Aldeguer seems to have gotten a little faster every weekend, albeit with the odd crash thrown in. While the learning curve is bound to flatten soon, he continued to edge closer to the front in France.
Aldeguer took his best grid position of the season at Le Mans, where he lined up fourth. That might have been a front row had he not crashed on a potentially faster lap in qualifying. His team-mate Alex Marquez, with all his experience, was only one spot ahead of him and would have known after qualifying that his days as clear team leader were numbered.
While Aldeguer ventured beyond the limit whilst flying in races prior to Le Mans, he brought the bike home on both Saturday and Sunday in France. And he did so in third place on both occasions – his first MotoGP podiums. His ride through the pack in his first wet premier class grand prix on Sunday was particularly eye-catching.
Loser: Enea Bastianini
While qualifying and the sprint were not too bad by the standards of Bastianini’s humble start to his Tech3 KTM career, Sunday unravelled in style. Bastianini was on the wrong side of the strategy divide for the French GP, so he went to the startline with a double long lap penalty hanging over him. But before he could even think about serving it, he had torpedoed his former Ducati team-mate Bagnaia out on the first visit to Dunlop.
Bastianini also fell in the process but dusted himself down and continued. After serving his penalties, he might have thought the worst was over… but he fell again when the rain returned on lap six. Again, he picked up the ‘dry’ RC16 to keep going, but it was clearly time to swap it for a ‘wet’ one. This he did, but not without managing to speed in the pits, and that earned him yet another double long lap penalty!
Bastianini did manage to finish, and such was the strangeness of the day that he earned three points despite being lapped. But for the man who won the French Grand Prix just three years ago, things have really plummeted. Things can only get better as he heads to another track on which he has fond memories for the British Grand Prix.
Winner: Raul Fernandez
Credit where it’s due: Raul Fernandez really turned his narrative around in France. Questions were being asked about whether he was worthy of his place on the MotoGP grid at all, particularly in view of his rookie team-mate Ai Ogura’s stellar performances. But Ogura’s form is beginning to drop just as Fernandez finds his mojo.
Although he had performed promisingly on Friday – notwithstanding a fall – it was a remarkable surprise when the Spaniard made it through a tight Q1 on Saturday morning. This was a session featuring some heavy hitters, including an out-of-position Fabio di Giannantonio aboard the factory GP25.
He didn’t trail home last in Q2 either, beating eventual winner Johann Zarco and Pedro Acosta to line up 10th. And as Fernandez took his best grid slot of the year, Ogura was left contemplating his worst: 19th.
Fernandez held that position in the sprint, summing up his newfound confidence on Saturday as follows: “I feel comfortable on the bike. I feel I can enjoy riding again and that I can use 90% of the bike. Saying that, I have a margin to find but now I’m heading in the right direction. I’m very happy.”
He then finished in an encouraging seventh place on Sunday despite having made the same tactical errors as most of the field. As in the sprint, he finished well clear of Ogura.
