Zarco takes astonishing home MotoGP win in mad wet race

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.

QUARTARARO AND @bradbinder_33 CRASH