Zarco found himself in third in Sunday's 30-lap grand prix at the Sachsenring after KTM's Brad Binder crashed out on lap 19.
Too far away from the leading duo of Jorge Martin and Francesco Bagnaia to catch them, Zarco had managed to grow the gap to the chasing VR46 Ducatis behind him.
At Turn 1 on the last lap, Zarco had a big scare on the front end under braking and nearly crashed.
Speaking after the race, he said this was because he could see the top two out of the corner of his eye and thought briefly that they could tangle with each other, which would have gifted him a maiden MotoGP victory.
"I wanted to keep the gap to [Marco] Bezzecchi and the gap was down," he explained.
"Then when I braked, I saw something moving in the first corner, and I was thinking the top two guys were fighting and at that moment I was thinking that maybe one of them crashed.
"And as I was thinking about that, I almost crashed myself. I got very scared because I could save it, but as I tried to slow down I went quite wide.
"I checked Bezzecchi was still not there, but just going wide in this corner, at Turn 3 I had another scare because the tyres on the right side were a bit dirty.
"My last lap was a 1m23.4s, almost two seconds slower than the top guys."
Third in the German GP marked Zarco's fifth podium of the 2023 season across sprints and grands prix, which moves him to fourth in the standings.
Zarco's Pramac team-mate Martin did the double in Germany, winning the sprint and scoring his first grand prix victory since the 2021 Styrian round.
Martin now trails Bagnaia in the standings by just 16 points heading to this weekend's Dutch GP at Assen.
Following its recent consistent run of podium finishes, Pramac currently sits top of the teams' standings, 38 points clear of VR46.
