On Stage 19 of the Tour de France, Bardet and his team mate Mikaël Cherel attacked together on a wet descent before the penultimate climb. Bardet escaped the yellow jersey group on the lower slopes of Mont Blanc with to go. Bardet caught the breakaway survivor Rui Costa with to go, dropped him on the steepest pitches of the final climb with remaining and won the stage by 23 seconds over second-placed Joaquim Rodríguez; ultimately, he was the only Frenchman to win a stage in the 2016 Tour de France. After winning Stage 19, Bardet rose from fifth to second overall in the general classification. He finished the Tour in second position in the final general classification, 4:05 behind Chris Froome, becoming the sixth Frenchman to finish in the top three in the final general classification over the previous 30 editions; the other five were Pinot and Jean-Christophe Péraud (both 2014), Richard Virenque (1996, 1997), Laurent Fignon (1989) and Jean-François Bernard (1987).