Johann Zarco had a dilemma. And it was one he had to solve in real time, fast.
MotoGP’s perennial nearly-man had finally achieved the premier-class victory that looked to have passed him by, winning last year’s Australian Grand Prix at Phillip Island with a last-lap overtake for his first world championship win since a Moto2 victory in Valencia in 2016.
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Back then, every Zarco win – and there were plenty of them as a two-time Moto2 champion – was celebrated in front of the fans with a trackside backflip off whatever fence or wall he could find. But after 2533 days without a somersault, could he still stick the landing?
“There definitely was a little bit of pressure,” the Frenchman grins in an exclusive interview with Fox Sports, recalling the moment.
“But I say to myself ‘the most difficult part is done, you have the win’. So, I thought I’ll just do it and see if I land on my feet, or not. At least I made the jump …”.
Zarco’s successful gymnastics were the culmination of a Phillip Island event that defied convention, produced intermittent thrills and caused a disbelieving shrug of the shoulders for those who lived it; it was an appropriately wacky race weekend for a rider whose premier-class career has never lacked for drama.
Debuting with Yamaha in 2017, Zarco rocketed into the lead of his very first MotoGP race in Qatar with an unhinged turn of speed so fearsome that his lap seven crash was as inevitable as it was bruising. Two years later, Zarco left Yamaha for a big-money deal with KTM before being sacked after just 13 races, his outspokenness and poor results abruptly leaving him on the MotoGP outer.
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When the lowly Avintia Ducati team gave him a lifeline for 2020, Zarco finished 13th overall … but somehow dragged his third-string bike to pole position and a podium in the Czech Republic that only reinforced his reputation as MotoGP’s most mercurial talent.
After that season saw a chance open up at Pramac Ducati when Jack Miller left for Ducati’s factory team, Zarco – by then in his 30s – spent the next two-and-a-half seasons mixing podium finishes with middling results. By the time he arrived in Australia last October, he’d managed 19 career podiums without a win, 11 of them for second place.
It always felt like it would take something highly unusual for his hoodoo to end. Phillip Island opened the door.
HATCHING A WINNING PLAN
With wild weather bearing down on the Island the longer the weekend went, race organisers hastily made the decision to run the Grand Prix on Saturday afternoon following qualifying, shelving the half-distance sprint race that typically serves as a curtain-raiser to the main event 24 hours later.
Zarco – and his rivals – had little time to react. With such a shift to the schedule, drama was almost guaranteed – and it came when Zarco’s teammate Jorge Martin, in the middle of a title fight with reigning world champion Francesco Bagnaia, elected to use Michelin’s soft-compound rear tyre for 27 laps of the punishing Phillip Island layout.
Trailing Bagnaia in the standings, the Spaniard gambled he’d be able to build up such a big lead that his rivals would struggle to hunt him down late in the race even as his tyres were well past their best. He was so nearly right.
From fifth on the grid, Zarco fought off a fierce early assault from Marc Marquez and settled into the chasing pack with Bagnaia, Ducati surprise packet Fabio Di Giannantonio and KTM’s Brad Binder. Martin was a speck in the distance ahead of the quartet, but Zarco was calmly concocting a plan at 330km/h.
PIT TALK PODCAST: In the Australian GP preview episode of ‘Pit Talk’, Renita Vermeulen and Matt Clayton look ahead to a big weekend at Phillip Island that will have a significant say in the MotoGP title fight, and catch up with last year’s MotoGP race winner Johann Zarco.
“When I saw Jorge going away [in the lead] I was thinking ‘just do your best to finish the corners and be ready’,” Zarco recalls.
“It was a control race, control everything as much as possible and see if you can be there at the end. We knew [Martin’s] rear tyre would drop, so from lap two or three until lap 25 I was just controlling.
“Maybe two, three laps to go I could see we were catching and I started to think something should happen in the last lap, so I tried to be in second position before the last lap because it will be the one time to overtake.”
Martin’s heavily-abused tyres were shot, and as his four pursuing rivals closed rapidly on the final lap, Zarco spotted his moment. As the five-bike pack thundered into Miller Corner, the fourth turn of the Island’s 12-corner layout, he made a robust pass into the lead, saw the open road ahead of him, and ripped the throttle for all he was worth.
Less than a minute later, Zarco crossed the line with Bagnaia, Di Giannantonio and Binder all less than a second behind; Martin, who had led for 26 laps and four corners, sunk like a stone to fifth.
Finally, after 120 races and so many near-misses, Zarco had done it. What followed – up until his backflip – is so vivid that he’s never re-watched the race, choosing instead to remember his breakthrough from his vantage point at the time. Twelve months on, the gratitude in his recollection of his drought-breaking win remains evident.
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“It was one of the best memories but it was mostly a big relief, clearly,” he says.
“Everyone for years was always asking ‘when is going to be the first victory?’ and when you hear that so many times, you get tired of it. Maybe for this, I could not scream from joy or explode, because it was more a weight that came off the shoulders, that was how it felt as soon as I take the victory.
“Maybe the good thing for me was that [the race] was on Saturday and not Sunday, which helped me to have less time to think. Less time to think, so go straight for the target.”
Zarco’s rivals, who’d seen him beat himself up for coming so close for so long, made a point of seeking him out on the in-lap back to the pits for the podium ceremony to offer a slap on the back here, a word in his ear there.
“I was surprised that so many of the other riders were happy for me,” Zarco says.
“I remember so well them riding beside me, shaking my hand, saying the congratulations … they all knew my story, that I am a fast rider and maybe I could have won other races but things were not matching, or I was making mistakes.
“So for them to be happy for me, it was emotional and it was a super nice moment, maybe the nicest memory.”
When the forecast winds turned feral and saw Sunday’s sprint race called off, Zarco could celebrate properly, seven years of repressed emotion pouring out before the next race in Thailand seven days later. He made sure to enjoy it, as he already knew there was no guarantee he’d get another chance.
HARD WORK WITH HONDA, BUT SIGNS OF LIFE
Existing on a series of one-year contracts at Ducati as Miller had done before him, the 34-year-old Zarco had already signed for LCR Honda for this season on a two-year deal that made perfect sense and offered late-career stability for the sport’s second-oldest rider, only Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro – who is retiring at the end of 2024 – his senior on the grid.
Leaving the sport’s dominant manufacturer to join a Honda set-up in the doldrums since Marquez suffered a career-changing injury in 2020 was a decision made easier by knowing he’d belatedly scaled the top step of the podium, and one where Zarco felt his experience could make a difference as his time in the sport ticks down.
It’s been a predictably torrid 2024 season for all four Honda riders – Zarco, 17th in the world championship, is their leading rider in the standings ahead of his return to Phillip Island – but there are green shoots of progress.
In Indonesia two rounds ago, Zarco had top-10 results in a sprint and Grand Prix on the same weekend for the first time all year. On several occasions, he’s dragged the RC213V into Q2, reserved for the fastest 12 qualifiers. On a grid featuring eight class-leading Ducatis and a host of fast rivals for KTM and Aprilia, they’re small victories, but victories nonetheless.
Phillip Island 2023 it isn’t, but in the circumstances, he’ll take it.
“We got some progress in Misano, and the results were better overall in Indonesia,” Zarco says.
“From the [northern hemisphere] summer I tried to get some improvements also on the riding style, I feel like I have been doing this after the summer. Now that there are things working better on the bike as well, we can be there to take opportunities.
“We did a step in the fast corners and we get much better turning in the fast corners thanks to the new fairing. We finally did a step on the aerodynamic side. But we still have a lack of acceleration, we cannot have a strong acceleration because the bike is doing too much wheelying, that is the weak point of our bike.
“This, I still don’t know how they’re going to fix it … [but] it’s a better part of the season for us.”
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