Practice pace shows Q2 miss the least of Marc Marquez’s worries at French MotoGP

All of a sudden, the alarm bells are starting to ring louder for Marc Marquez and Ducati. The start to the 2026 campaign has been well below where things stood 12 months prior, with the Spaniard some 66 points (and five race wins) worse off after the first four rounds.

Until the Spanish Grand Prix, there was little need for panic. It was clear that Aprilia had stolen a march on Ducati. The bike itself had speed, as Marquez’s sprint win in Brazil showed, but it lacked consistency - he lacked consistency.

Much of that could be explained away by his ongoing shoulder injury recovery. In Spain, his crash out of the grand prix has turned the pressure up on his hopes of defending his crown and achieving something no rider since 1975 has done in winning an eighth MotoGP title.

Now 44 points down on championship leader Marco Bezzecchi, the French Grand Prix really has to signal the beginning of a dramatic turnaround for Marc Marquez, with seven rounds coming in the next 10 weekends. There’s still a hell of a lot of racing to go after that point, but this is very much a phase of the season where your championship hopes can end.

Ducati made some gains at the post-race Jerez test, a day on from Alex Marquez’s dominant victory and another Sunday podium for VR46’s Fabio Di Giannantonio. Jerez showed that the GP26 is very capable of challenging the Aprilia when everything lines up, and its riders can get the most out of it.

That was the aim for the test, and it seemed like Marc Marquez may have finally been pointing in the right direction. There was more intrigue on Friday at Le Mans when he wheeled out of pitlane on 2025-spec aero, while Alex Marquez and Di Giannantonio had the new 2026-spec fitted. Marc Marquez had previously parked the 2025-spec that he liked so much because it made his bike too physical. The move to homologate that package suggests he’s feeling better.

Yet, come the chequered flag in Practice on Friday, Marquez was out of the top 10 in 13th, 0.464s off the pace in what was an incredibly tight session.

While Honda and Johann Zarco stole the plaudits, it’s clear that Ducati has come to play at Le Mans, with Di Giannantonio just 0.010s off the best pace and Pecco Bagnaia winding back the clock to finish third on an identical 1m30.045s to Alex Marquez.

The bike, Marquez accepts, is capable. He, however, is not.

“We struggled a bit,” he told Sky Italy. “It's not the best thing to be in Q1, but we couldn't have been faster today. The bike is pretty good, it's easy to ride, and that's the most important thing. No one said it would be easy after the injury. We're working to try to get back to last year's level, I don't know if it's the same as last year, but it's close. I'm not pushing the front as usual, I'm not riding hard, pushing the front tyre. Let's see if I can do that…”

He later told the media: “It’s not that the others are faster; it’s that I’m slower.”

Back-to-back Ducati wins on the cards under normal conditions

The forecast for Sunday’s racing at Le Mans is bleak, with some predictions of rain even interrupting Saturday’s running. At the moment, that seems like Marc Marquez’s best hope of getting involved in any podium battles.

Over a five-lap representative run on a soft rear tyre, Marc Marquez averaged 1m31.518s, while he did a 1m31.632s on the 15th lap of that tyre. But that’s about half a second a lap slower than team-mate Pecco Bagnaia, who completed an identical stint length and laps on a soft rear, with his best at the end of his stint a 1m31.057s.

Bagnaia was unwittingly involved in his team-mate missing a place in Q2, after crashing at Turn 6 while Marquez was on his final flying lap. But even before he reached that point, Marquez was not doing anything on the timing screens to suggest he was going to elevate himself into the top 10 anyway.

Given everything he has been through over the first four races, and indeed last year, Bagnaia is naturally wary of making any bold predictions. But his pace over one lap and over a longer distance is undeniably good.

“I think we've made a small step forward since the Jerez test, and I felt it here today,” he said. “I noticed it, but it's too early to say anything. We'll see tomorrow, plus the conditions were so good for me only today, so it will be important to adapt to more critical situations as well.”

Fabio Di Giannantonio is looking similarly strong, which is little surprise by now given his start to the 2026 season. He was a whisker slower than Bagnaia with a 1m31.084s pace average. Both riders, as well as Spanish Grand Prix winner Alex Marquez, look to have adopted Ducati’s 2026-spec side aero upgrade on Friday at Le Mans.

Alex Marquez was a bit quicker than his older brother, but has some way to go to close down his Ducati counterparts having averaged 1m31.417s on his Gresini-run GP26 on Friday. To his credit, Le Mans hasn’t typically been one of his strongest circuits, with the Spaniard second in the sprint last year, which marks his only podium in France in the premier class.

Beware of the Aprilia threat

Marco Bezzecchi and Aprilia’s reign was ended at the Spanish Grand Prix. But a bad day for the championship leader so far represents a second-place finish. While there was no headline lap time on Friday in France, Bezzecchi’s threat remains potent when looking through the long run analysis.

He completed nine representative laps on the soft rear tyre and put 18 laps on it by the time he was finished. His average pace was 1m31.165s, while managing a 1m31.138s very late into that tyre’s lifespan.

As far as Bagnaia is concerned, Bezzecchi is very much a factor: “It's hard to say. In my opinion, pace-wise, Diggia, Bez, and I are the slightly faster ones.”

So far in 2026, we’ve seen Aprilia get to its best level on a Sunday. With Sunday expected to be wet, the sprint could well be the only dry race this weekend, and the half-distance contests have not worked in Bezzecchi’s favour. If he wants to turn that around, he admits he needs to improve under breaking to get there.

“I need to fine-tune my riding a bit because there were two or three points where, especially under braking, I wasn't precise enough,” he explained. “And this also affected the bike's performance a bit, because ultimately it does what you say. So, I need to fine-tune myself a bit and try to understand how to improve in these situations. Then I'll definitely try to work on the bike's overall stability when we're on the soft tyre, which is always our base tyre.”

Team-mate Jorge Martin crashed very early in Practice but still made it through to Q2. His race pace is in the ballpark at 1m31.260s average across a seven-lap run. The Spaniard, currently 11 points down in the standings on Bezzecchi, says he’s struggling to generate front tyre temperature.

That is a sure-fire way to experience the gravel traps of Le Mans. And with under 0.3s covering the top 10 at the end of Practice, to have a lack of confidence in the front-end of your bike on Saturday in what will likely be the most explosive pole shootout yet in 2026 is a recipe for disaster.

Can the home fans really dare to dream big… again?

Johann Zarco’s French Grand Prix victory last year was a golden moment in the country’s glittering motorsport history. In front of a record sellout crowd, and with both of his parents in attendance for the first time in his career, Zarco delivered something truly special.

The grim forecasts for Sunday have already led to many shining the spotlight on his 2025 heroics in similar conditions. In some respects, it feels like he has taken some of these comments with a thin layer of frustration, given his proven capabilities to win MotoGP races in dry conditions.

On Friday, he made a point of proving that, rain or shine at Le Mans, he can be fast. He guided his LCR-run Honda to one of only two 1m29s laps put on the timesheet at the end of Practice, capping off a strong day for HRC, who was fastest in FP1 with Luca Marini.

“I’m happy that I’ve been very strong in dry conditions today,” he said,” because everyone was waiting for wet conditions for me to have a chance of playing on the top positions. So, if I can build my confidence in the dry, knowing that if it’s raining that I will also have my chances, that will be very interesting. I still don’t know how the race situation will be, but starting on the first row, this will be the best way to understand another time, like in Jerez, which level we can have with the Honda.”

Le Mans is a grippy circuit, which suits the Honda. Joan Mir ensured two Honda in the top 10 at the end of Practice.

The 2020 world champion was just 0.185s off the pace of Zarco, having felt confident with the RC213V’s front-end. His long run was interesting. While pace-wise, he was slightly slower than Zarco at 1m31.259s, he managed an 11-lap representative stint and put 18 laps on the soft rear, with his best at the end of it a 1m31.138s.

Honda, then, does go into the next phase of the French Grand Prix with genuine podium hopes if it can match the likely step Ducati and Aprilia, as well as Pedro Acosta on the KTM, will take on Saturday.

If Zarco can convert his pace into a front row and the heavens do open on Sunday, Le Mans’ grandstands may well lose all of their roofs by the chequered flag…