Movistar Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo made it two MotoGP wins in a row when he took the chequered flag at Le Mans this afternoon, crossing the line almost four seconds ahead of team-mate Valentino Rossi while defending champion Marc Marquez ended the day in fourth.

Lorenzo was inch perfect for the entire race, taking the lead from Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso after a Marquez lunge into Dunlop on the first came to nought and Lorenzo was able to sneak the Italian and then simply ride away from the pack.

Rossi took a gamble with his setup for the race after struggling in practice and said in parc ferme that it took him three laps to work it out and then he set a new lap record on the fourth lap as he moved past Marquez to fourth and then set off after Iannone and Dovizioso.

The Doctor caught and passed Iannone on lap ten and then, with 16 to go, he went underneath Dovizioso for second but had no answer to Lorenzo’s pace and couldn’t close the gap as Lorenzo managed the race at the front.

Marquez spent a lot of time running off track on Friday and Saturday, and another error saw him drop back into sixth as Britain’s Bradley Smith took advantage to move into the top five.

Snith was able to pull a gap on the Spanish wunderkind and had a two-second advantage at one point as he also reeled in Iannone. Marquez, though, found some pace and as Smith struggled to find a way past the Italian, Marquez tried to pass both on the brakes into Dunlop.

The pass stuck on Smith but Iannone fought back and an otherwise dull race was spiced up by some paint-swapping between the factory Honda and Ducati men with six laps of passes and bar banging, while Smith spectated in sixth place.

Marquez won out after pulling a small enough gap with two left to go and he crossed the line with a four-tenth advantage over a man who dislocated his shoulder earlier in the week after a crash testing at Mugello.

Smith will be heartened by his pace over the weekend, and doubly so as he finished some 14 seconds ahead of his team-mate Pol Espargaro, who could only muster seventh place at a track he is usually quick.

It was a bad day for the other Brits as Scott Redding crashed out at La Chapelle on lap four and Cal Crutchlow also binned it, losing the front on the brakes.

Eugene Laverty, however, nabbed his first championship points, taking two for 14th place as he finished less than a second behind Hector Barbera.

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