A circuit and method for driving a brushless sensorless direct current (DC) motor (2), using the steps of: at the beginning of each phase, driving the motor in PWM mode; monitoring the duration (Tc) between successive zero-crossings of the back electromotive force (BEMF), and accordingly predicting the next zero-crossing; and before the next predicted zero-crossing, switching to a linear driving mode only until the actual zero-crossing of the BEMF.