Not many riders get to win their debut race in the class of kings: not Marc Márquez, not Giacomo Agostini, not Kenny Roberts, not Valentino Rossi. None of these legends even led their first big-bike GP. But Johann Zarco did. On 26 March the Frenchman scorched away from Márquez, Rossi and the rest at Losail, taking more than half a second a lap out of them.

Could he do what 500cc rookie Jarno Saarinen did in April 1973 when the Finnish legend made Agostini look like a slow, old man? For a while, Zarco did just that, risking it all on the dewy desert track, front end juddering precariously as he forced his Tech 3 YZR-M1 into the turns. By one-third distance he was 1.6 seconds ahead; a good victory margin in MotoGP. Then he crashed.

Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. But this was some debut from a rider who was never hailed as a new god or even an alien – like Rossi, Márquez and Jorge Lorenzo were when they stepped up to the big class.

Zarco came into MotoGP under the radar because glory in Moto2 doesn’t guarantee glory in MotoGP, as former champions Tito Rabat, Pol Espargaró, Stefan Bradl and Toni Elías have proved. But already he is the find of 2017, MotoGP’s fastest rookie since Márquez arrived in 2013.

Of course, Qatar could have been a lucky one-off: grip at Losail is sketchy at best, so the more experienced MotoGP men were easing themselves into the race, searching for the limit before laying it on the line.

But Zarco was just as impressive at the next races. In Argentina he was a sight to behold, laying down a smokescreen of burning Michelin, spinning the rear tyre with glorious abandon out of pretty much every corner. He did this as he fought back from 11th on the grid – a legacy of his first wet MotoGP qualifying session – to pass Andrea Dovizioso, Dani Pedrosa, Danilo Petrucci and Aleix Espargaró to finish fifth. Two weeks later in Texas he nearly took out Rossi while battling for third. Shy he isn’t.

It’s become a thing in MotoGP: fast rookies getting into trouble when they ruffle the leathers of the established riders. It happened to Marco Simoncelli in 2010, to Marc Márquez in 2013, and now it’s happening to Zarco.

“Zarco is always very fast and he rides the bike very well,” said Rossi after the COTA incident. “He has great potential, but this is not Moto2. If you want to overtake you must overtake in another way – he arrives into the corner too much in delay. He needs to stay more quiet.”

But Zarco has always been like that: his eyes firmly on the prize, never mind the obstacles in his way. When he was 16 he loaded up his 50cc scooter and left his parents, riding 150 miles from the family home on the Cote d’Azur to stay with Laurent Fellon, a racer turned race engineer. The Fellons have become Zarco’s family and Fellon has been his coach and manager ever since.

Zarco had met Fellon the previous year at a minimoto event, and Zarco immediately knew the former racer was the man to help him climb the racing ladder. Ever since then they’ve climbed together: the Italian pocketbike championship, the European pocketbike championship, the Italian 125 championship, the Red Bull Rookies Cup and then the Red Bull MotoGP Academy along with with Cameron Beaubier, Danny Kent and his current Tech 3 teammate Jonas Folger.

When Zarco won the inaugural Rookies crown in 2007 he was surely on the way to great things. But there have been many Rookies champions who haven’t gone on to achieve great things; in fact, Zarco is the first Rookies champ to make it into MotoGP. He believes that many Rookies get side-tracked by stuff that doesn’t make them faster: natty hairdos, girls and fun times.

“If you become Red Bull Rookies champion and you think you have made it, then you are finished,” says Zarco. “You have to realise it is just one of many, many steps.”

In 2009 Zarco made his GP debut on an Aprilia 125. Two years later he won his first GP, beating Maverick Viñales and others. In 2012 he graduated to Moto2 but didn’t win a race until he switched to a Kalex, riding for Finnish team-owner Aji Ajo, architect of Red Bull KTM’s many Moto3 successes. Zarco dominated Moto2 with Ajo, winning 15 GPs and back-to-back world titles in 2015 and 2016.

Suzuki chased Zarco’s signature for 2017, but finally he signed for Hervé Poncharal’s Monster Yamaha Tech 3 outfit. So far it’s a match made in heaven: a Frenchman riding for a French team with a French crew chief on the most rider-friendly bike on the grid.

But the step from Moto2 to MotoGP isn’t easy. The concept of Moto2 is this: put the world’s fastest up-and-coming riders on essentially identical bikes and let them slug it out, using their talent, rather than their machinery to succeed. Set-up options are limited and electronics are non-existent, so the riders must look for lap times within themselves. “You learn a lot about yourself in Moto2,” says Zarco.

This is great for developing riding technique, but MotoGP is very different, because learning to fine-tune a 250 horsepower missile is as difficult as learning to ride one. In the premier class, riders spend most of their time in the pits discussing electronics options, so it’s a whole new world.

Zarco enjoys working with electronics because they can take his riding to a new level. “The feeling with a MotoGP bike is better because everything in the bike gives you the opportunity to go really fast. I like the electronics. They allow you to try things that if you tried in Moto2 you would crash. On a MotoGP bike you can try, knowing that the bike will help you if you make a mistake. This encourages you to try new things.”

However, he’s careful not to get caught up in the mind-bending complexities of MotoGP electronics. His attitude is to keep it simple.

“In MotoGP you always try to find a way to feel better on the bike to be faster,” he says. “You can spend a lot of time thinking how you can change everything with the electronics, but I try not to spend too much time doing this. I try to use them the same way I used them in Moto2: don’t make it too complicated.”

Zarco’s crew chief Guy Coulon, who has worked in GPs since the 1980s, is impressed by his latest rider’s way of doing things. Both Zarco and teammate Jonas Folger use the 2015-spec YZR-M1 chassis, which some riders might use as an excuse, but they don’t.

“Johann doesn’t complain and he says he doesn’t care what chassis he’s using,” says Coulon. “He doesn’t want to have an excuse. During winter testing I sometimes told him, you are a few tenths behind the top guys, but with a newer spec engine or chassis… but before I could finish explaining, Johann would say, no, no, no, I don’t care and I don’t complain, because I’m still not using 100 per cent of what I have.”

At 26 years old, Zarco is ancient for a MotoGP rookie. He’s intense and serious too, more so than many younger Moto2 kids with their snapback baseball caps and Twitter addictions. He speaks of rigour, perseverance, seriousness, evolving step by step, about never relaxing, never being satisfied with his achievements, never thinking he’s made it and always questioning himself. MotoGP is relentless – there’s no other way to make it in the class of kings.

Zarco admits he was surprised by his early speed in MotoGP, but he knows he’s still at the bottom of the learning curve, because riding a fast lap is very different from riding a fast race.

“MotoGP is more complicated because the feeling with the bike is always changing, whereas with a Moto2 bike the feeling is very similar all through the race. You cannot ride a MotoGP bike like a Moto2 bike; you have to manage the way the bike changes. This is what I need to understand.”

Coulon says Zarco learned plenty by riding with Rossi at Circuit of the Americas, where he recorded the third fastest lap of the race, behind Márquez and Dani Pedrosa.

“Johann told me he’s not worried about the pace of the top guys and he made a very interesting analysis of the race,” explained Coulon. “He said he could match Valentino’s pace, but the race became more difficult with used tyres. He saw Valentino compensate by riding a different way in the entry, middle and exit of the corners, but Johann doesn’t have enough experience to do that. He could compensate in the entry and exit of some corners but not over a whole lap, so that’s when Valentino pulled away. He knows he can only improve this through more race experience.”

Zarco certainly enjoyed racing with his childhood hero. Even better, he gets to compare his data with Rossi’s. “In Moto2 you can compare yourself with other riders when you are riding, but now I can lay my data over Valentino’s. I also spent time with him on track during pre-season testing. His riding style is old style; he manages the bike very well, all is perfect, all is nice and he is very strong on the brakes. Some guys don’t brake so hard because they want more corner speed, but Valentino wants to be strong on the brakes because he knows it can be useful in the race.

“I’m very impressed by Pedrosa and Lorenzo. When you are behind them they look slow but after one or two laps they make a gap on you, even though you are pushing more. It looks like they’re not pushing but they’re faster, which makes me think, ah, this is the way to ride a MotoGP bike.”

And that is exactly how Zarco rides. He may have had the front tyre squirming at Losail and the rear smoking in Argentina, but usually he is beautifully precise on a bike. He believes in smooth, arcing corner speed, rather than point-and-squirt, but like any Moto2 winner he also has plenty of aggression in his arsenal. The Rossi/COTA incident and his very first corner in MotoGP at Losail – where he brazenly barged past both Márquez and Viñales – prove he can be aggressive, sometimes too much.

But they said that about Márquez, with whom Zarco has also had some fun. “What you see of Marc on TV isn’t what we see on the track. Sometimes I feel I’m faster than him, but then on the exit of the corners he’s faster. He has the bike moving more than the other guys but he’s all under control, he knows what he’s doing. Maverick is amazing too. He’s the first guy to ride the Yamaha in a different way – strong and aggressive.”

These are the men Zarco must beat if he is to win a MotoGP race. He won’t predict when, or if, this might happen because he wants to walk the walk, not talk the talk.

But there’s little doubt he has the talent to make it to the top of the podium, if he keeps taking those forward steps and stays in one piece. Zarco has never been a big crasher (except in his debut Moto2 season when he hit the ground 19 times) because he uses his head.

If he does win a MotoGP race it will be a big day in France. The nation that hosted the world’s first motor races in the 1890s has won just three premier-class races in 69 years of GP racing, with Pierre Monneret in 1954, Christian Sarron in 1985 and Regis Laconi in 1999.   

Vital stats

Name: Johann Zarco

Born: Cannes, France, 16 July 1990 (26)

Height: 171cm

Weight: 66kg

2005 2nd Senior Mini European Championship

2006 12th 125 Italian Championship

2007 1st Red Bull Rookies Cup

2008 Red Bull MotoGP Academy

2009 20th 125 World Championship (WTR Team Aprilia)

2010 11th 125 World Championship (WTR Team Aprilia)

2011 2nd 125 World Championship, 1 win (Avant Ajo Derbi)

2012 10th Moto2 World Championship (JiR Motobi)

2013 9th Moto2 World Championship (Ioda Racing Suter)

2014 6th Moto2 World Championship (Caterham Suter)

2015 1st Moto2 World Championship, 8 wins (Ajo Kalex)

2016 1st Moto2 World Championship, 7 wins (Ajo Kalex)

WORDS MAT OXLEY 

PHOTOGRAPHY GOLD & GOOSE