2025 French GP: The art of racing in the rain

In the annals of motorsport, we have seen that whenever it rains during a race, the established order gets upset, in more ways than one. Yes, the greats who get defined as such have that magic prowess of driving a car or riding a bike on a knife edge in the wet but then there are others who get a chance to master the changing conditions from wet to dry and then back again to wet or in-between and that’s when we have upsets and new heroes who emerge.

Sunday, May 18, was an incredible day for motorcycle sport for it was the scene of a Frenchman winning the Grand Prix of France for only the second time in the history of the World Championship! Johann Zarco took his LCR Honda, against the run of play to score an emotional and a well-deserved win for himself and his Japanese bike maker. All this thanks to the vagaries of weather that made riders zip in and out of the pits, changing bikes from wet settings to dry settings and then back to wet as mother nature deemed it imperative to make these gladiators on two-wheels deliver an exhilarating show for the over 3,11,000 spectators who had thronged the Le Mans Bugatti circuit over the weekend just for such dramatic action.

In so winning, Zarco gave his countrymen something to cheer for. The last Frenchman to win in the blue riband class of motorcycle sport was as far back as 1954 when Pierre Monneret rode a works 4-cylinder Gilera to victory. However, Zarco’s victory was a rare one in the face of overwhelming Ducati domination of the MotoGP World Championships over the past four seasons and came against the run of play. Ducati were seemingly on song to go past the Honda NSR 500’s record of winning 22 races in a row in the 1990s and if it had been a dry race the Borgo Panigale based bike maker could have gone on to set a new benchmark of winning 23 races in a row.

Now that’s just a stat but what a stat it would have been had Ducati won and that brings me to dive into the sport’s history and do a comparison between Honda’s NSR 500 two-stroke and the present-day Ducati Desmosedici. The earliest NS triple brought Honda its first 500cc GP world title with Freddie Spencer aboard it but immediately post that it evolved into the NSR 500 four-cylinder bike from the 1984 season. From there on over the 18-year career of the NSR 500 in its very many progressions, it went on to score no less than 132 Grand Prix wins! What helped was the fact that by the time Honda got it right, it became a bike on which so many different riders could win. And if you go through the roster of riders who won with the NSR 500 then it reads like a who’s who of motorcycling greats: Mick Doohan had 54 wins on it, Wayne Gardner 18, Alex Criville 16, Valentino Rossi 13, Freddie Spencer 10, Eddie Lawson and Tadayuki Okada had four wins apiece and then there were other winners such as Alex Barros, Luca Cadalora, Loris Capirossi, Max Biaggi, Randy Mamola, etc.

Fast forward to the Ducati Desmosedici which debuted in 2003 and over the last 23 seasons, with even more Grand Prix races per year it has 112 victories, cementing the Honda NSR 500’s win-to-race ratio as the best in the sport. And just like only a couple of guys could win with the NSR 500 in the opening years of its competition life, the same held true for the Desmosedici with only the great Casey Stoner able to master and monster this bucking bronco.

Apart from the cool calm methodical genius that is Pecco Bagnaia, who has won the most on it and bagged two world championship titles, Jorge Martin took one to another world title last year and then we have had the likes of Marco Bezzecchi, Enea Bastianini, Jack Miller, Danilo Petrucci, Fabio Di Giannantonio winning until the end of 2024. And in 2025 we have the sight of the Marquez brothers Marc and Alex dominating aboard it.

Which brings me back to rain, the great leveller. Zarco had qualified 11th but when most riders gambled from wet to dry tyres and back to wets, he showed immense character and just stayed put on wets. When the heavens opened up, he had a handy 5-second lead and when the long lap penalties were served by everyone, he began to open the lead over his pursuers and even Marc Marquez, the master of wet weather riding began to drop, finishing a whopping 19.6 seconds behind Zarco at the chequered flag. Now that is one for the history books and how one wishes there is a wet race every once in a while!