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Since 2017, French motorcycle racing has undergone something of a night and day switch, with the emergence first of Johann Zarco and then with Fabio Quartararo turning the MotoGP world on its head.
It’s suddenly given France not only regular podium contenders but its very own premier class race winner for the first time, and the popularity of the sport has skyrocketed.
However, while they might be united in a common goal of winning races and representing their country, the two racers couldn’t be more chalk and cheese in their personality and their approach.
Zarco is almost stereotypically French, a southerner who isn’t afraid to speak his mind, who loves to entertain with music, games of boules, local rose wine and big lunches at his home in Avignon, and who can bring a snotty attitude to interviews if he doesn’t like the line of questioning.
He’s became one of the sport’s most controversial figures in recent times because of those personality traits, too, seemingly always embroiled in some sort of controversy – be it walking away from the factory KTM team mid-contract and mid-season or a series of high-profile collisions so far in 2020 with Pol Espargaro and Franco Morbidelli.
He’s also twice a world champion, though – the only man to take two title wins in the Moto2 class since its introduction in 2010.
That’s given him a high profile in his native land – something that grew exponentially when he joined French team Tech3 in 2017 and immediately became a regular on the MotoGP podium.
Quartararo is a completely different character to Zarco despite hailing from only 250km along the coast in Nice.
A professional athlete in more than just his on-track performance, the 21-year-old clearly takes good friend Lewis Hamilton as a role model more than his fellow French racer Zarco, carefully cultivating a media persona over the past 18 months since he arrived in MotoGP.
Young, charming and always fashionably-dressed thanks to a series of link-ups with designer brands, he’s much more a fan of French hip hop than Zarco’s go-to musical choice of The Beatles.
And while right now it might seem like Zarco remains France’s choice in terms of who the nation is cheering for in this weekend’s race at Le Mans (where 5000 fans will be admitted), veteran MotoGP journalist Michel Turco says that it’s more a matter of the two riders appealing to two very different audiences within France.
“Johann was like a dog in a cage, and now that he’s free he’s trying to catch up the time with the people that he’s lost” :: Michel Turco
“Johann has a longer story for the fans. He won the Moto2 championship twice, he started MotoGP with Tech3, and he is a character,” explains Turco.
“Fabio isn’t yet, but that’s normal because he’s only 21 and Johann is almost 30.
“He has changed a lot during the past years, since the split with his manager, who was kind of a dictator. For many years he wasn’t allowed to speak to the fans, to speak to the journalists, to speak to the other riders.
“He was like a dog in a cage, and now that he’s free he’s trying to catch up the time with the people that he’s lost.
“He’s more French, and his fans are older. Fabio will catch the interest of the younger people, because it’s a matter of generations, and he will become more popular in the end because his results are already bigger.
“He will become a character of his own, but it takes time, and he won’t be the same as Johann either, because he is more mainstream.
“Fabio wants to be a model athlete, like Hamilton. He doesn’t want to be a character who is different to the others; he wants to be the model to the others and to achieve the very best results.”
Between the two, however, they’ve managed to captivate public interest in France in a way that previous riders like Loris Baz (pictured above), Sylvain Guintoli and Mike di Meglio have been unable to do despite considerable success of their own.
That’s perhaps best-exemplified by the huge increase in media attention that the two have received of late, according to Canal+ MotoGP commentator David Dumain.
“He had the suit of the hero three years ago and now another guy is wearing it. But Johann is a sincere guy” :: David Dumain
“We are lucky, because Canal+ has only been in MotoGP for two years,” he admitted to The Race, “and we have two French riders who can fight for podiums.
“In France we have major sports like cycling, football, rugby, but the French media isn’t used to writing about motorcycle racing.
“Yet this year Fabio has had two front covers of L’Equipe, which is incredible. The French public are discovering MotoGP, and we have a lot of new fans.
“For some races, we have had almost a million viewers – more than rugby, more than football, and near to Formula 1 even though they are breaking records this year thanks to [Pierre] Gasly.”
But while the attention this year might firmly be on championship leader Quartararo after his incredible rookie season in 2019 and three wins so far in 2020, Dumain also insists that there’s been no malice between Zarco and Quartararo over the changing of the guard.
“What is very good for us and what we appreciate a lot is that they are opponents but not enemies,” says Dumain.
“Every time Fabio does a good result, Johann goes to him with no frustration to congratulate him. And he could do – he had the suit of the hero three years ago and now another guy is wearing it.
“But Johann is a sincere guy – sometimes things don’t go well for him because of it! But he is sincerely happy with the results of Fabio, and he enjoys the success of Fabio the same way Franco Morbidelli does.
“We feel like they are in a good place together. They are French heroes but they have a good relationship between them too.”
