Why Zarco won the French GP (and these guys didn't)

For all the early mayhem of MotoGP's instantly-iconic 2025 French Grand Prix at Le Mans, there was just one decision - to be made one way or the other by all teams and all riders - that should've separated the race's 'haves' and 'have-nots'.

Eventual winner Johann Zarco - winner by a 19.907-second margin that is deeply unusual for modern MotoGP - was exploring the Dunlop chicane run-off on the opening lap, then trailed the leader by 30 seconds after four laps.

The fact he won this race after having picked the right tyre at the start suggests the other seven riders who made the same choice should've monopolised the podium battle.

So how come they didn't?

French Grand Prix grid

1 Quartararo 2 M Marquez 3 A Marquez
4 Aldeguer 5 Vinales 6 Bagnaia
7 Bezzecchi 8 Miller 9 Morbidelli
10 Fernandez 11 Zarco 12 Acosta
13 Binder 14 Rins 15 Mir
16 Marini 17 Di Giannantonio 18 Bastianini
19 Ogura 20 Oliveira 21 Savadori
22 Nakagami

Riders who started the race on wet tyres in bold

After the initial start was aborted due to every rider piling into pitlane because it began to rain on the initial formation lap, the second formation lap was carried out with just nine riders rolling off from the grid.

Those nine were Zarco and the seven riders on his wet-tyre strategy, plus 'imposter' Lorenzo Savadori, who at that point had already gambled on slicks. Almost everyone else envied Savadori, because every other rider beyond these nine went into the pits for their 'slick' bike, accepting a double long-lap penalty in the process.

Indeed, the slicks were the tyre to have early on - then very quickly weren't, as Zarco and his LCR team anticipated.

"Honestly speaking, we have a couple of radar applications," LCR boss Lucio Cecchinello told TNT Sports after the finish. 

"One is a radar application that I use in aviation. I had told him [Zarco]: 'In 20 minutes there will be more rain.' So we were honestly pretty confident. 

"And then I showed him the radar and said ‘this is coming, this is coming’. I believed that he was convinced to stay on the track with the radar and it was the perfect choice."

But LCR wasn't alone in having that information - just alone in fully capitalising on it.

First one down

Had the race played out just slightly differently, it could've been the much-needed jolt to Pecco Bagnaia's flagging title campaign - because, like Zarco and LCR, he had the race figured out.

"I was checking the forecast from one hour before till 15 minutes before, still on the grid. They were saying that if it started to rain it would continue to rain," Bagnaia explained. 

"So I was sure to start on rain tyres and continue riding." 

But the chaos of the different tyre compounds on the (at that point) dry run to the Dunlop chicane left Bagnaia in the firing line.

He had unsurprisingly developed wheelspin on the wet tyre, so tried to tiptoe into the corner yet was slammed into by former Ducati team-mate Enea Bastianini - something he described as an "easy-to-have kind of disaster" when there's a tyre mismatch.

"If I looked to the gaps between riders, even with the crash I was finishing in the top five. But I needed to stop [in the pits] because the gear lever was a bit stuck so it was very difficult to get gears, and also we were missing some parts."

The forced pitstop effectively ended Bagnaia's race. He finished 16th, having crashed out of the sprint early.

"Everything went wrong today. Everything went wrong in the weekend."

Miller's victory bid unravels

Zarco was always likely to do well in a race like this, but he repeatedly acknowledged that he started to realise he can win only once Pramac Yamaha’s Jack Miller went down ahead of him.

Miller's reputation in these kinds of conditions precedes him, and he had a comfortable cushion over Zarco while running the same strategy - aided by Zarco having been relegated to effectively last by a Joan Mir collision caused by the Bastianini/Bagnaia melee.

It was unsurprising, therefore, that Miller was absolutely despondent talking to media after the race - having highsided at Raccordement just as the race was decisively tipping into the wet runners' favour.

"They [Pramac] were spot on with their forecast," he recalled dejectedly. "Gino [Borsoi, team boss] told me before the race started 'there's more coming'. I stuck to him and trusted his word. When Savadori came past me on slicks... I was second-guessing, for sure. But I was just trusting it. Was praying to the weather gods that it was going to come on again shortly. And she did. But wasn't good enough to stay on."

"Johann was a few seconds behind me. We were sitting pretty, both him and myself. It's unfortunate."

The crash itself bewildered Miller. "It's just a strange one. Especially when it stepped out and kind of flipped me over the front, I was, like, dumbfounded a little bit."

Bailing out on the winning strategy

Luca Marini, Marco Bezzecchi and Alex Rins all didn't like what they saw in those early laps on a dry track with wet tyres - so pitted and gave up a golden opportunity, before having to anyway return to the pitlane to swap their dry bikes for wet ones again a few laps later.

"Today was an opportunity, no?" vented Marini. "I am just super angry with myself because I did everything wrong.

"When I needed to make a choice, I made the wrong choice.

"I made a really, really good start, I was behind other riders with slick tyres and everybody was so fast with slicks, and the Tarmac was completely dry. And I said 'with these tyres I cannot do 26 laps'. But after four laps it started to rain again. So, you know... it was just a pity.

"The decision was to go on wet because the forecast was saying it could rain, but during the first lap I changed this idea and this was the mistake."

Though Marini didn't feel good on the Honda in the wet, he reckoned he'd had enough in hand over Zarco to be "for sure" in the mix for the win before he abandoned his strategy.

Rins said he was 100% certain about starting on wets - but that the Yamaha just didn't feel right under him in those early laps, forcing him to bail out.

"I looked at Jack Miller," Bezzecchi admitted. "Normally he’s very good at these kind of changes, because it was my first time in these conditions with Aprilia so I wasn’t really confident on what to do."

But Bezzecchi felt the track was drying quickly and swapped to slicks, then stayed out a little too long on those slicks and crashed.

Oliveira's podium charge unravels

After the pitstop phase shook out, Miguel Oliveira made up a deeply unlikely top two behind Zarco - but while Zarco more than held his own, Oliveira only went backwards before crashing out, like his Pramac team-mate Miller had done, at Raccordement in similar fashion.

He described the crash as having made "no emotional damage, nor physical". The rain conditions were advantageous in his first race back from injury - given that in the dry he wasn't convinced he had enough strength to reach the chequered flag - but once the race settled down he badly ran out of rear tyre grip.

"All of a sudden the bike could snap and you lose the rear on entry. It was a nightmare to manage that," he said.

The wet tyres were the right decision, but it seems there was still a wrong decisiont to be made within that right decision. Oliveira ran the medium wet rear - which, up and down the grid, appeared to be coping much worse in the latter stages in the race than the soft wet rear that carried Zarco to victory (and Marc Marquez and Fermin Aldeguer to the podium).

Nakagami hangs on

Honda wildcard Taka Nakagami ended up a minute behind Zarco running the same strategy - but in a wild race like this that proved good enough for sixth, as the Japanese got all the decisions right.

Nakagami has had no experience in the wet on this bike so his electronics set-up was completely out of kilter - too much traction control, "never a good feeling". He just had to hang on.

"I just tried to focus on my job," he explained. “No crash, not overriding, just keeping constant. It was super chaos, everyone going to the pit, changing bikes, it's so difficult to understand.

“But anyway I enjoyed the race - a very long race, many-many laps, but I'm happy to finish top six. This I think no one expected. A nice surprise for the test team."