French MotoGP Rider Ratings: "Worst Ducati" picked out with a dreadful review

A chaotic French MotoGP resulted in a dramatically extended championship lead and a dream home winner.

Johann Zarco - 10

He was in the gravel at turn three and he won the race anyway. It was a sublime ride from Johann Zarco, who finally won his home Grand Prix having looked like he might since 2017.

It was also a first Honda win since Alex Rins at the 2023 Grand Prix of the Americas, also taken for the LCR team, who have now won twice since the factory HRC team last won in MotoGP.

It’s not often Marc Marquez gets beaten at all when he’s in the form he’s been in in recent weeks, so to come out of the pits eight seconds in front of him and then pull another 12 seconds in the remaining part of the race was exceptional.

A truly outstanding ride from Zarco, who did essentially nothing wrong all day.

Marc Marquez - 9

In a season where anything less than victory is essentially failure for Marc Marquez, his second place in the French Grand Prix was one of his best performances of the year so far.

He made the right call to start on slicks, was solid at the start when others struggled to manage the chaos of the start combined with riding on slick tyres with a surface that was becoming wetter, and made the sensible decision to let Zarco go after switching to wets.

The reward for Marquez is a 22-point championship lead over Alex Marquez, who crashed twice, and a lead of 51 points over Francesco Bagnaia, who was unlucky to be taken out at turn three but was only in that position because he made the wrong decision on tyres to start the race on.

A championship performance from the eight-times champion.

Fermin Aldeguer - 9.5

The only thing Fermin Aldeguer didn’t do at Le Mans was qualify on the front row.

He was on the podium in the Sprint, and then again in the chaotic wet Grand Prix.

Both rides were fantastic from the young Spaniard, but the Sunday performance really stood out, being his first wet race in MotoGP and having not been necessarily a wet weather specialist in Moto2.

After a tricky start to the season for Aldeguer, he is really finding some consistency now, and this weekend – even ignoring the critical mistakes of some of his stablemates – he was the third-best Ducati rider.

Pedro Acosta - 7

Pedro Acosta had a decent weekend in Le Mans. He stopped being trounced by Maverick Vinales, and was competitive all weekend.

That said, he blew a top-five in the Sprint when he crashed at the final corner while battling for nothing; and then he gave up a podium finish in the Grand Prix, finishing fourth in the end.

It was an improvement for Acosta and there looks to be actual potential there now, but still below the expectations placed on him.

Maverick Vinales - 7

Another weekend of being legitimately competitive for Maverick Vinales and this run continues to go on. It still feels like we’re just waiting for the moment when it all falls down and the inconsistent Vinales we all came to accept returns, but the longer this run goes on the more we have to wonder if it will fall down at all.

On the down side, Vinales wasn’t the best KTM in France, but that in itself is a positive thing – Vinales isn’t doing anything impossible to make results on the RC16, that is proven by Acosta’s similar performance level at Le Mans.

Takaaki Nakagami - 7

Under the radar all weekend in his first wildcard appearance as an HRC test rider, Takaaki Nakagami was perfectly fine all weekend.

At least, he was until the Grand Prix, when he emerged from the pit stops at the beginning of the race in the top-10, and kept on plugging away to end up sixth at the end.

Incredibly, sixth marks Nakagami’s best result in a premier class Grand Prix since he was fifth in the 2021 Styrian Grand Prix.

Raul Fernandez - 7

Seventh for Raul Fernandez feels like the kind of result he needed to fall his way whatever the circumstances.

Things have been mounting against him this year as his results struggled to get going in the early races, and it seemed to be going even worse at Le Mans when on Friday morning he was four seconds off the pace in the opening laps.

But he ended up qualifying through to Q2 in Q1, and took that top-10 finish in seventh by riding sensibly in the Grand Prix and letting everyone else make the mistakes.

It’s not a result that means we should expect Fernandez in the top-10 from now on but it’s at least something to ease a bit of the pressure that has been stacking up early n this season.

Fabio Di Giannantonio - 5

Fabio Di Giannantonio is on a factory Ducati contract with the same machinery as the riders in the factory team, including for Marc Marquez who is dominating the season.

But his speed was woeful all weekend in the dry, missing Q2 on Friday and again in Q1. He was at least able to recover to seventh in the Sprint, and then was solid enough through the early part of the Grand Prix to put himself in position to take eighth.

The race results were better than the weekend for Di Giannantonio, who was the worst of the Ducati riders for the most part.

Lorenzo Savadori - 7

Like Nakagami, Savadori did his job as test rider/fill-in perfectly fine all weekend until the Grand Prix, when he made better strategy decisions than most of the field (albeit with less to lose) and finished in the top-10.

Ai Ogura - 6.5

It was not a stellar weekend for Ai Ogura in Le Mans, missing Q2 and struggling in the rain. That he was able to salvage a top-10 from the weekend, then, was a positive point for the Japanese rider whose early season form has drifted somewhat.

Luca Marini - 6

Luca Marini seemed to have an okay enough weekend. Nothing outstanding but nothing dreadful, either. Of course, when someone wins by 20 seconds on the same bike it looks a bit rubbish when you finish 11th, but the circumstances complicated everything.

Alex Rins - 4

Alex Rins continued to be out-classed by his teammate Fabio Quartararo at Le Mans.

Quartararo was on pole, while Rins couldn’t make it to Q2; the Sprint was solid for the Spaniard as he went from 14th to eighth, but the Grand Prix resulted in a fairly miserable 12th place.

Enea Bastianini - 3

KTM seems to be making legitimate progress at the minute but Enea Bastianini continues to struggle.

18th in qualifying, 13th in the Sprint, and 13th and a lap down in the Grand Prix after speeding in the pit lane and earning a long lap penalty – on top of the two LLPs he served for swapping bikes at the end of the sighting lap for the quick-started race.

Marco Bezzecchi - 4

Marco Bezzecchi continues to show promise on the Aprilia but continues to throw it all away with mistakes.

He was fifth in the Sprint before he ran on at Garage Vert, then crashed in the Grand Prix at Chemin aux Boeufs before remounting for 14th.

At some point Bezzecchi will need to deliver a result. We’re six rounds in now and he is yet to do so.

Franco Morbidelli - 3

Franco Morbidelli crashed four times over the French GP weekend, which would be bad enough on its own but he also finished 15th in both races having qualified ninth.

If Di Giannantonio was the worst Ducati in terms of speed, Morbidelli was almost the worst in the races.

Francesco Bagnaia - 1

Morbidelli couldn’t quite be the worst Ducati in the races because that was clearly Francesco Bagnaia, who had his worst weekend since the 2022 Japanese Grand Prix in Le Mans.

Not only did he score no points on a weekend for the first time since the 2022 Motegi race, Bagnaia also made a number of mistakes, including again in qualifying which left him only sixth on the grid; and after speaking of how the 2025 Ducati is not going to give him the feeling he wants on Friday he was never really able to build any kind of positive momentum on Saturday or Sunday.

Then there was the crash in the Sprint, which Bagnaia was at a loss to explain afterwards, saying he had less lean angle than previous laps when he crashed; and then the decision to start the Grand Prix on wets, which effectively doomed his race from the off.

Enea Bastianini didn’t help him by cleaning him out at turn three on the first lap, but Bagnaia’s confidence seems so low at the moment that it’s hard to imagine that he would have achieved a particularly strong result had the start been normal, or even if he’d have just got through turn three unscathed.

In November last year, Bagnaia was the reference Ducati rider. Based on current form he might be only the fourth-best rider in the Bologna brand’s stable right now.

Alex Marquez - 2

Alex Marquez was typically solid all weekend, finishing second in the Sprint behind his brother because it seems that is all that can happen in a MotoGP Sprint this year.

But in the Grand Prix he crashed twice, meaning he went from leading the championship by a point coming into the weekend to trailing by 22 coming out of it.

The degree to which this has been a bad weekend for Alex Marquez is determined by whether you see him primarily as a MotoGP rider who, having won a race this year and led the championship on two occasions, is also a title contender; or whether you see him primarily as Marc Marquez’s brother.

If it’s the latter, it’s probably not that bad a weekend.

Miguel Oliveira - 5

Miguel Oliveira’s return to MotoGP was nothing spectacular but he was on course for at least a solid top-five before he crashed at the treacherous final corner.

It was a shame to miss that, especially having qualified 20th and finished 20th in the Sprint, but it was ultimately hard to know what to expect from a rider who’s been out since Argentina.

Overall, it was probably a fine weekend, just with some disappointment at the end. It was a nasty crash, though, so it was good that Oliveira seemed to emerge from it relatively unharmed.

Brad Binder - 4

It was a tough weekend for Brad Binder with two non-scores. He also missed Q2. It looked, though, like his pace might have improved, although he never had the chance to verify this when it mattered.

Jack Miller - 5

Q2 for Jack Miller was solid, but 11th in the Sprint followed by a DNF in the race when he was primed to take the position ultimately taken by Zarco after the stops at the start was disappointing.

Fabio Quartararo - 8

Pole position, leading laps in both races, and challenging for the podium in the dry was all impressive for Fabio Quartararo. He made a mistake in the Grand Prix, but anyone who watched the 24 Heures Motos in April will be aware of how treacherous the final corner at Le Mans can be in the wet – this was proven by several other riders also crashing out there, including Binder and Oliveira.

The end was unfortunate for Quartararo, but everything that came before it was great.

Joan Mir - 6

15th was an underwhelming qualifying for Joan Mir, but he recovered well in the Sprint to finish ninth. He was then extremely unfortunate to go down in the Bagnaia-Bastianini tangle at turn three on the opening lap of the Grand Prix.