The news has fallen, it is now official, at Honda, the factory team is moving from the dream team to the boarding house. The Márquez brothers will be the spearheads and we wish Álex courage to confront his elder Marc with an RC213V which sent Dani Pedrosa and Jorge Lorenzo into retirement. The collateral victim of these musical chairs is Johann Zarco whose plans are now reduced to their simplest expression. Logically, all that remains is Marc VDS Racing in Moto2 in place of the World Champion leaving for MotoGP. But at Ducati, we are studying the Frenchman’s file…
The proof with this undisguised meeting between Johann zarco and the Ducati staff, starting with Gigi Dall'Igna et Paolo Ciabatti. We don't know what they said to each other, but we can imagine a discussion around the Desmosedici from the Avintia team. An option that the Frenchman has clearly ruled out. For him, this team is not at the level and it would be worse than experiencing the KTM waking nightmare of the first part of the season.
In absolute terms, we cannot go against the assessment of the double Moto2 World Champion. But in light of the current state of this team which could evolve by receiving a helping hand from the Ducati factory to raise its level of play. In this case, it would obviously be a different story.
As a coincidence, the renewal of the contract between the Italian manufacturer and the Spanish team was announced this afternoon for the next two MotoGP seasons. It is notably announced that the renewed partnership will benefit from significant improvements which will allow a qualitative leap from 2020. In recent years, the Reale Avintia team has been a customer of Ducati and owned the Desmosedici from last season, without much support.
From now on, the conditions of collaboration between the parties are expected to progress. In this context, an arrival of Johann zarco could be considered. In this case it would be Karel Abraham which would be excluded. To be continued, especially since so much Ciabatta which Tardozzi declared that this story only concerns Avintia and zarco. And not Ducati itself… To be continued.
