Britain's Cal Crutchlow, riding with a fractured right tibia, bagged his best-ever MotoGP result this afternoon at a wet Le Mans, riding a smooth and calculated race to finish second behind winner Dani Pedrosa.
But it was disaster for the works Yamaha team with Jorge Lorenzo slumping to seventh and Valentino Rossi finishing 12th after a crash.
After a dice with Andrea Dovizioso, Pedrosa got the better of the Italian on lap 14 and set about building a six-second lead and it was left to Crutchlow to uphold Yamaha honour as his works stablemates struggled.
The Isle of Man resident, who fractured his right tibia in a crash yesterday, had already gone past Rossi and had Dovizioso in his sights but he played a waiting game and pressured his 2012 team-mate into a mistake on the exit of the Dunlop chicane with four laps remaining.
Dovizioso was unseated by his GP13 and Crutchlow also had a similar moment, but he gathered quicker on the throttle and slid past the Ducati man to take second place and immediately put a gap on the Italian.
"I'm happy. The whole team did a fantastic job. We deserved this. We showed our pace in dry and wet conditions, and it's nice to finally get that podium. Hopefully we can be injury free and come back at Mugello just as strong," said Crutchlow.
Meanwhile, Marc Marquez came back from a poor start and an off-track moment at the entrance to Dunlop to put in fastest lap after fastest lap to reel in Dovizioso and Crutchlow, going under Dovizioso on the penultimate lap to steal the final podium spot but he didn't have enough laps to catch the Coventry man.
There will be questions aplenty in the works Yamaha garage as Lorenzo looked like he ran out of grip very early on. He was passed by Rossi and Crutchllow in quick succession early on and then Nicky Hayden also came past followed by Alvaro Bautisa on lap 17.
Rossi looked like he had the pace early on but then slipped behind Crutchlow and into the clutches of Hayden. He then went down at Garage Vert on the brakes, taking the American off the track with him and Rossi recovered to take 12th place.
Bradley Smith took his best MotoGP result also with a ninth place, just behind Bradl who re-mounted to eighth place. Michael Laverty, in his first wet race on the PBM bike, took 17th.
