Race report
MotoGP French GP
Le Mans MotoGP: Marquez wins after fighting off Ducatis
Reigning MotoGP champion Marc Marquez eased to his third victory of the campaign at Le Mans, recording Honda's 300th win in grand prix motorcycle racing's premier class.
Valentin Khorounzhiy
Edited: May 19, 2019, 1:01 PM
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Marquez, who had lined up on pole, fought off the Ducatis of Danilo Petrucci and Jack Miller early on before assuming full control of the race and cruising to his second successive Le Mans win.
Petrucci had challenged Marquez at the start, the pair going side by side into Turn 1 before Marquez reclaimed the lead down the inside into the chicane.
The Ducati rider tried again a lap later, but once more couldn't make a move stick, and his initial challenge then faded as he was shuffled down to fifth a lap later.
Marquez, however, could not establish an immediate gap as Pramac privateer Miller quickly negated his breakaway, before lunging past the reigning champion on the fifth lap.
But Marquez was back ahead two laps later, diving down the inside of Miller at the Dunlop chicane and successfully anticipating a La Chapelle counter-attack from the Aussie, who ran out wide and finally surrendered first place to the Honda man.
From there on Marquez began to assert his authority, pulling out a second between himself and Miller as the 27-lap race approached its halfway point.
Ducati's Andrea Dovizioso, who had slipped down to seventh at the start but fought back up the order, was shadowing Miller by that point, and moved past when Miller went wide at the La Musee left-hander.
Yet Dovizioso, three seconds behind Marquez after he'd made the move on Miller, had no answer to the race leader's pace either, and was instead faced with a late challenge for second from Petrucci.
With five laps left to run, Petrucci attempted a move down the inside of Dovizioso entering the Dunlop chicane, only to run out wide and hand the spot back to his factory squadmate.
He was eyeing up a move at La Musee on the subsequent lap, and dived down the inside at the left-hander the next time by, but Dovizioso held his line and maintained position.
The works teammates remained close on track until the chequered flag, Petrucci eventually finishing 0.158s behind Dovizioso to secure his first podium as a factory Ducati rider.
Miller held on to fourth place, seeing off the Yamaha of Valentino Rossi in a late scrap for position.
Rossi's teammate and practice pace-setter Maverick Vinales had dropped to as low as 14th early on, and made little progress before being taken out by rookie Pecco Bagnaia on the seventh lap.
Bagnaia lost control of his Pramac-run Ducati at the sweeping Turn 12 right-hander and collected Vinales, who was launched off his Yamaha and into the gravel.
KTM's Pol Espargaro muscled his way into the top five at the start, and eventually secured sixth place, recording the Austrian manufacturer's second-best MotoGP result thus far.
Franco Morbidelli couldn't find a way past Espargaro and settled for seventh, while his Petronas Yamaha teammate Fabio Quartararo recovered from a poor start and a third-lap error to finish close behind in eighth.
LCR Honda's Cal Crutchlow was ninth, with Suzuki's Alex Rins managing no better than 10th and Marquez's teammate Jorge Lorenzo finishing right behind Rins despite having run the whole race within the top 10.
The other Suzuki of Joan Mir crashed on the warm-up lap at the Dunlop chicane, with Karel Abraham simultaneously dropping his Avintia Ducati at the same corner.
Both eventually joined the race, but while Abraham was eventually black-flagged, Mir was last of the finishers in 16th.
Tito Rabat (Avintia Ducati) and Andrea Iannone (Aprilia) were both retirements, as was LCR Honda's Takaaki Nakagami, who had crashed out of 12th place.
Race results
Cla # Rider Bike Laps Time 1 93 Marc Marquez
Honda 27 2 4 Andrea Dovizioso
Ducati 27 1.984 3 9 Danilo Petrucci
Ducati 27 2.142 4 43 Jack Miller
Ducati 27 2.940 5 46 Valentino Rossi
Yamaha 27 3.053 6 44 Pol Espargaro
KTM 27 5.935 7 21 Franco Morbidelli
Yamaha 27 7.187 8 20 Fabio Quartararo
Yamaha 27 8.439 9 35 Cal Crutchlow
Honda 27 9.853 10 42 Alex Rins
Suzuki 27 13.709 11 99 Jorge Lorenzo
Honda 27 15.003 12 41 Aleix Espargaro
Aprilia 27 29.512 13 5 Johann Zarco
KTM 27 33.061 14 55 Hafizh Syahrin
KTM 27 35.481 15 88 Miguel Oliveira
KTM 27 36.044 16 36 Joan Mir
Suzuki 26 42.448 30 Takaaki Nakagami
Honda 18 29 Andrea Iannone
Aprilia 8 12 Maverick Viñales
Yamaha 6 63 Francesco Bagnaia
Ducati 6 53 Tito Rabat
Ducati 2 17 Karel Abraham
Ducati 5 View full results
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