MotoGP: All the stats ahead of this weekend’s racing at Le Mans

The MotoGP world championship is heading back to Le Mans – and in preparation for the action kicking off, here’s a bunch of facts and figures about this weekend’s MotoGP racing at the iconic French circuit. 

• This weekend will be the thirtieth round of the MotoGP hosted at Le Mans. The first was in 1969 and 18 have been consecutively held there since 2000.

• After his latest victory at Jerez, Dani Pedrosa has now won at least one MotoGP race per season since his first win at the Chinese GP in 2006.  He is currently fifth in the all-time standings – and if he wins at Le Mans, he will overtake Giacomo Agostini.

The current rankings for the longest run of MotoGP wins (at least one per season) are:

Valentino Rossi: Great Britain / 2000 – Catalunya / 2016 – 15 years 332 days

Alex Barros: FIM (1993) – Portugal / 2005 – 11 years 204 days

Phil Read: Ulster (1964) – Czech Republic (1975) – 11 years 16 days

Giacomo Agostini: Finland (1965) – West Germany (1976) – 11 years 7 days

Dani Pedrosa: China (2006) – Spain (2017) – 10 years 358 days

• Pedrosa’s victory in Jerez was the 53rd GP win of his career – and if he takes the victory at Le Mans, he’ll equal Mick Doohan’s record of 54. If manages to win this weekend, it’ll also be the first time since 2013 that a rider has managed back to back victories (interesting, they were at Jerez and Le Mans).

• French rider, Johann Zarco is currently the best rookie on the grid, sitting in sixth position. He also holds the record for the highest number of points scored by a French driver in the first four races of the Championship (since Randy de Puniet earned 36 points in the first four races of the 2010 race season).

• Only six riders have managed to score more points than Zarco at the start of the MotoGP World Championship: Daijiro Katoh (2002), Troy Bayliss (2003), Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner (2006), Jorge Lorenzo (2008) and Marc Márquez (2013).

• Only four riders have managed to bag points at each of this season’s races: Valentino Rossi, Jonas Folger, Scott Redding and Héctor Barberá.

• Jorge Lorenzo has achieved the most victories at Le Mans: six in total (one in 250cc and five in MotoGP). While his podium in Jerez was the first for Ducati, since Nicky Hayden did the same in 2011.

• Rossi is leading the Championship with 62 points from the first four races – but he is the lowest scoring leader since the current scoring system was established in 1993. Rossi is also the first rider to be sat at the top of the table without having won a race, since Nicky Hayden did the same in 2006.