<p>LE MANS, France — Australian rider Jack Miller made a great start to overtake polesitter Fabio Quartararo and then held him off to win the French MotoGP on Sunday.</p>
<p>The Ducati rider started third behind Quartararo’s Yamaha teammate Maverick Vinales but surged ahead. Quartararo caught Miller a few laps in but later took a time penalty as heavy rain fell and then subsided.</p>
<p>Miller clinched his second straight win of the season and third overall, beating Johann Zarco by four seconds and Quartararo by 14.5 as two French riders finished on the podium.</p>
<p>“I was riding to the conditions. I was just counting the laps,” Miller said. “It’s absolutely amazing, I can’t thank the team enough.”</p>
<p>Quartararo moved into the championship lead with 80 points, one ahead of Italian Francesco Bagnaia, who was 16th on the grid but finished a credible fourth.</p>
<p>Zarco is now third overall with 68 ahead of Miller on 64.</p>
<p>The race started in warm but windy conditions on the 4.2-kilometer (2.6-mile) Le Mans circuit in northwestern France, which has a longest straight of 674 meters.</p>
<p>Vinales also overtook Quartararo, who dropped to third, while Franco Morbidelli crashed out on Lap 1 and the rain soon started to fall heavily.</p>
<p>Quartararo surged into the lead on Lap 4 as Miller briefly went off into some gravel, while world champion Joan Mir came off his Suzuki amid increasingly slippery conditions.</p>
<p>All the riders got a bike change on Lap 5 as a result. Quartararo came out behind six-time world champion Marc Marquez, while Miller got back into third as riders adapted to new tires.</p>
<p>“The first couple of laps were real dodgy on the wet tires," Miller said.</p>
<p>A rare error from Marquez saw him ejected from his Honda after misjudging a turn, giving Quartararo the lead with 19 of 27 laps left. </p>
<p>But the Frenchman got a time penalty with 16 laps remaining, allowing Miller to pull clear while Zarco’s extra speed and nous in the rain shifted him into second.</p>
<p>It was a bad day for Marquez, who came off for a second time.</p>
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