Coming into the 2021 MotoGP season, few people expected that Pramac Racing’s Johann Zarco would emerge as the early championship leader.
But that’s exactly what happened after the first two races of the year in Qatar, where a brace of podium finishes meant the satellite Ducati returned to Europe four points clear of fellow Frenchman Fabio Quartararo.
Unfortunately, Zarco’s time at the top was limited, coming to an abrupt end at the next round in Portugal, where a gearbox problem while once again running in podium contention brought him crashing out of both the Portimao race and the championship lead.
Quartararo’s runaway win in Portugal meant he was set to head to the next round in Spain as the new leader regardless of Zarco’s crash.
Given Quartararo’s arm pump misery at Jerez, Zarco had a bit of a better time than the Yamaha man last time out but compared to his early podium success, eighth place was somewhat lacklustre for the Ducati rider.
Making it even worse for Zarco was that another Ducati rider emerged at the top of the table following Quartararo’s woes, as works man Pecco Bagnaia’s run of consistency means that he now sits two points clear of Quartararo. Zarco is 18 points behind in fifth place, as both Maverick Vinales and reigning champion Joan Mir have also snuck ahead of him.
Eighteen points is a more than recoverable gap with a theoretical 15 races remaining – or at least it is for a factory rider in a frontrunning team. Given Zarco’s Pramac squad is second in Ducati’s pecking order and has never won a race, a fightback feels unlikely now.
But while it seems like Zarco’s brief 2021 title aspirations are over ever, it’s far from mission failed for the Frenchman. In fact, his home race at Le Mans this weekend might well represent the first chance he has at achieving what should be his primary goal for this year: handing Pramac Racing its very elusive first MotoGP victory.
We’ve explored Pramac’s many near-misses before, but essentially it’s a crying shame that one of the stalwarts of MotoGP’s independent class has come so close so many times to victory but never managed to achieve it.
With riders like Ben Spies and Andrea Iannone to more recent signings like Danilo Petrucci and Jack Miller, Pramac has been robbed time and again of what should have been a triumphant trip to the podium for team boss Francesco Guidotti – perhaps most notably when Petrucci was pipped by Valentino Rossi by a mere 0.057s at Assen in 2017.
It’s not just Pramac Racing which is missing out on that win, mind you. It’s also something that would be met with huge celebration at Ducati headquarters in Bologna, because the firm has still never managed to win a race with a satellite team – unlike Honda, Yamaha and now even relative newcomer KTM thanks to Tech3’s pair of 2020 wins.
That’s quite remarkable given the vast support Ducati has given to its independent teams over the year.
Honda has been a semi-regular customer team winner since the early days of the four-stroke machines and Sete Gibernau’s efforts to stop runaway champion Rossi with Gresini (pictured above in 2003), while Yamaha joined the list in style last year as Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli racked up six victories between them for its Petronas SRT squad.
No such success for Pramac. If Zarco can achieve it, he’d be a bit of a hero in Italy.
Zarco has already shown this year that he’s capable of coming close to the top spot and finally recording what would be his own first MotoGP win as well, even though he is a double world champion in Moto2.
His Qatar performances were incredibly impressive, and as the consistently unpredictable nature of modern grand prix racing regularly shows us, even if you just finish second often enough, you’ll eventually end up winning – just like Miller managed to do for the factory team last time out at Jerez when Quartararo faded.
One thing you can never underestimate with Zarco is his raw speed. He showed during his Tech3 Yamaha days that he has the pace needed to win, and the traumas of his abortive 2019 move to KTM seem to have taught him the importance of patience and consistency, adding valuable tools to his arsenal.
There are tracks later in the year that will suit his package more than Le Mans, with key targets for victory likely to be Ducati-friendly venues like the Red Bull Ring. He’ll definitely not want to squander those opportunities.
But with no need to look at the points table anymore, Zarco is out for one thing and one thing only at his home race.
He’s came close at Le Mans in the past, too, leading there on the Yamaha and eventually finishing second after picking up the pieces from a Rossi/Vinales tussle in 2017 that ended up with the Doctor in the gravel. But the ambition to go one better will be burning for him this weekend.
Even though the French Grand Prix will run with no spectators as France continues to overcome one of the most out-of-control COVID situations in Europe, it’s impossible to discount the emotions and passion triggered by a home race.
It’s something that KTM rider Miguel Oliveira has already spoken about this year, admitting that even with no fans allowed to watch him in action at the Portuguese Grand Prix, the mere fact that the race was at Portimao was enough to give him a boost (one which he did eventually squander by crashing out).
So while Zarco’s amazing start to 2021 might not feel as impressive now as it did a few weeks ago, his year hasn’t necessarily peaked – and it certainly doesn’t mean that he’s failed to achieve the primary target of his and Pramac’s season.
