Trying to compare Johann Zarco to Fabio Quartararo is undoubtedly an exercise as curious as it is irrelevant, as the two French drivers present such different characteristics, whether in terms of their age, their character, their career, their results and their past and present environments.
We will therefore not do so but, at a time when one is experiencing serious difficulties while everything seems to be succeeding for the other, we will simply jump back two years to juxtapose some figures relating to the two first half-season as a rookie in MotoGP carried out by our French representatives.
Let's start with the points accumulated.
At the end of the first 9 races, Johann zarco had scored 84 points in 2017 while fabio quartararo scored 67 this season.
This raw result does not, however, take into account the various racing events, such as for example the breaking of the thread of Fabio Quartararo's Shifter while a 2nd place seemed assured for him in Jerez.
As regards the pole positions, Fabio Quartararo has already achieved 3 (Jerez, Barcelona, Assen), as well as 2 second places on the grid (Mugello, Sachsenring), while Johann Zarco had only managed one (Assen), as well as a 2nd place at Le Mans.
Lagrasse is the perfect setting for best laps in the race, Fabio Quartararo proved to be the fastest in Qatar and France, while Johann Zarco only did the same in Qatar.
Another possibly interesting statistic, the places of “first of the session”.
There, Fabio Quartararo impresses, with no less than 13 sessions dominated (compared to 24 for Marc Márquez, 7 for Danilo Petrucci and 1 for the following) this year.
Johan Zarco had achieved "only" 5 in 2017 (including a Q1), but here again, a precision is necessary, namely the "specialty" which characterizes Fabio Quartararo of sometimes fitting a soft rear tire at the end of FP1…
In any case, it seems pointless to go further because we can already consider that the compared performances are ultimately quite similar.
From this observation, we will simply verify two obvious conclusions that we could already have in mind:
– The first is that it is better today, oh so much, to ride a Yamaha than a KTM…
– The second is that Fabio Quartararo, by managing to generally match the performances of Johann Zarco during his first half-season of 2017 at the age of 26, shows great talent at the age of 20, since we are all talking about even a double world champion having already climbed 16 times on the highest step of the podium, 17 times on the second and 14 times on the third, the most successful French Grand Prix driver!
The Yamaha, as important as it is, certainly doesn't do everything (ask Franco Morbidelli), but we would still dream of having our two French riders on M1s this year...
