After victories in 2020, Fabio Quartararo aims for the world title

The devil wants to frighten his opponents. To kick off the 2021 season, Frenchman Fabio Quartararo has chosen one of the few places in his outfit where a motorcycle rider can express his personality: his helmet. For the first time since 2015, he changed its design, decorated on the top with a demon’s head, as he had done on his child’s helmet, which had earned him the nickname “El Diablo”. “I wanted to change the design to make it more aggressive”, does he have Explain. A way to mark his ambitions before the first race of the year, Sunday March 28 in Qatar.

The helmet is far from being the only change for the Niçois this season, his third in the top flight. At 21, Fabio Quartararo has pushed his sport legend Valentino Rossi a little more towards retirement, who is double his age but also seven MotoGP world championship titles to his name between 2000 and 2009.

The French and the Italian, barely three podiums in the last two seasons, have traded places in the Yahama ecosystem: the former has been promoted to the flagship team, while the latter has to be content with a satellite team, Yahama-SRT. While both will ride the same bike, Fabio Quartararo is now supported by a better team and has more leeway to influence the development of his machine.

“Fight to be world champion”

This change of status in one of the best stables in the paddock comes with a goal: to win the world title. “The objective is to fight to be world champion. The first year [en 2019], we made podiums, [en 2020] victories… The last step is missing, to be world champion ”, he told Agence France-Presse in February.

The rider held his place in the first qualifying session on Saturday: he completed the second fastest lap, and will start in the front row with the Italian Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati), and his new teammate, the Spaniard. Maverick Vinales.

This is one more step in his supersonic career, which changed dimension from 2018, the year of his first victory in the Moto2 category. Promoted in MotoGP in 2019, “El Diablo” has continued to break records of precocity, becoming the youngest rider to win a pole position, two weeks after his 20th birthday, at the Spanish Grand Prix in Jerez.

He will experience five more during his season, failing to cross the finish line in the lead on Sunday. Several times, he had to give in to the pressure of the six-time Spanish world champion Marc Marquez, six years his senior and to whom he is constantly compared.

Read also Fabio Quartararo, the motorcycle prodigy

The course was crossed in the first race of the 2020 season: the French won the same Grand Prix de Jerez, becoming the first French to win in the premier category of motorcycles since Régis Laconi in 1999. He also became the first dedicated rider on a Yamaha from a satellite team.

Fabio Quartararo on the first place of the podium of the GP of Catalonia, in Montmelo (Spain), September 27, 2020.

In total, he will win three times at the start of last season, a record for a Frenchman. All these successes have taken place in Spain on circuits which he knows perfectly well for having learned there on two-wheelers. At the head of the general classification at mid-year, relieved of the pressure of Marc Marquez, who had to stop his season as soon as it began after a fall, Fabio Quartararo was, for a moment, a favorite figure for the final coronation.

The Frenchman’s end to the year, however, was not easy. He got angry with his bike that was not competitive enough, doubts and chained the poor performances: he did not manage to finish better than eighth in the last six Grands Prix of the season, despite two pole positions at the start.

A season that promises to be very dense

He even finishes four times beyond the 14e place, concluding his season in eighth place in the general classification, a good distance from the Spaniard Joan Mir, crowned for the first time in his career. “On the grid I was thinking about too many things. We didn’t have the bike to win, only to do 7e or 8e, and I wanted to do too much. Gold, 7e or 8e, these are points to take “, he recounts.

He will need lucidity for this new season which promises to be very dense, with 19 races on the program, and where many drivers have a card to play. In the absence of Marc Marquez (Honda) at least for the first few weeks, all eyes will be on the Suzuki of reigning world champion Joan Mir and his compatriot Alex Rins, third in 2020.

The Ducatis of Australian Jack Miller and Italian Francesco Bagnaia also proved to their advantage in pre-season testing. Without forgetting Fabio Quartararo’s teammate, Maverick Vinales and his 26 Moto GP podiums. Not enough to scare the French under his helmet.

Johann Zarco, the other Frenchman who aims for podiums

After several checkered years, Johann Zarco has no more time to waste and showed it during preseason testing, with a peak speed recorded at 357.6 km / h, the record in MotoGP history. . The performance, unapproved because it was not achieved during a race, gives hope to the Frenchman to regain the podiums: he had six in his first two seasons, in 2017 and 2018, and one alone since.

Zarco joined in 2021 Ducati’s main satellite team, Pramac. It’s a form of rebirth after it hit rock bottom in 2019, where the adventure with KTM came to an abrupt end mid-season for lack of results. Relaunched in 2020 at Avintia, he also dreams, at the age of 30, of entering his name on the prize list of a Grand Prix. In 2020, “There were a lot of different winners [neuf], that gives me to think that it will be my turn this year ”, hopes the double Moto2 world champion (2015-2016).