Walking to a different tune: Johann Zarco is MotoGP's appealing survivor

“We believed the soft could work…but it was the wrong choice.” Johann Zarco has never shied away from the easiest or most obvious moves in MotoGP. Electing for a leftfield race tyre in last weekend’s hot, 21-lap chase around Brno and the first Grand Prix of Czechia in half a decade didn’t stick as the man who turned 35  – the series’ oldest campaigner by three years – on the eve of the meeting laboured to 13th place.

The three points he acquired at Brno wrapped a limp end to the first phase of a 2025 season in which Zarco has exemplified the present plight of the world’s largest motorcycle manufacturer. Zarco has accumulated DNF-DNF-12-DNF-13 in the last five rounds, but he has also pushed Honda‘s current RCV package to the boundary of its current possibilities, often outshining the factory HRC duo of Joan Mir and Luca Marini.

In Honda’s case, any progress lately has been countered by regression, any potential by frustration and any gains by comparative stasis with the rest of the field. Zarco has often tried a zany approach on Saturdays or Sundays in the quest for results and to marry his own prolonged ambition against the pragmatism of Honda’s development journey.

“It’s quite positive, this eighth position,” Zarco quietly admitted nevertheless of his actual world championship ranking in the wake of Sunday’s race and as MotoGP enters a three-week summer hiatus. But he then added: “I hope when we start the second part of the season, we will get some step up from Honda, which is very necessary. I’ve done an evolution from the start of the year, but now we are stuck. We are really on the limit…and we have tried different set-ups, but they haven’t worked.”

The 2025 job remit feels oddly suitable for Zarco. One of two Frenchman in the 22-rider premier class field, he has always been MotoGP’s more alternative, quirky character. Intelligent, thoughtful, musical, spiritual he is also hard to predict, sometimes hard to read and an individualist (a nice way of saying he seems a bit of a loner), Zarco is nevertheless extremely committed to his craft.

Underneath the distinctive and unusual light green Red Bull cap the sideburns show the first flecks of grey. The face carries the marks of mileage compared to the clean-cut appearance of a man who won the first of two Moto2 world championships almost 10 years ago. The physique, predictably, still seems highly trained under the white Castrol LCR Honda polo shirt and zip top.

As the most senior rider and third-most-experienced on the MotoGP grid, Zarco brings a serenity and level-headedness to his work. In his media debriefs, he talks often of “catching” opportunities. He radiates a stoicism mixed with eccentricity.

This is perhaps understandable for a sportsman that was feted and intensely mentored from a young age, who was prone to piques of ego and acted like a prima donna in his brief ill-fated time as a factory rider at KTM for the first half of 2019 where, instead of bonding a fledgling team and unit, he broke free of his development responsibilities. Momentarily marooned, he was able to restart his career with three race outings at LCR as injury cover; humbled but with perspective.

We sat in the same LCR hospitality together recently, and there was a way to generate an instant reaction from the Frenchman by referencing his ultimate ‘catch’. “It seems like a long time ago,” he smiles when asked about his second career MotoGP win and arguably one of the most emotional scenes of recent seasons with his victory on home turf in Le Mans in May. “I don’t think about it too much, maybe because I did a lot of things afterwards, the calendar was like this [relentless]!”

Zarco then describes an annual family reunion that just happened to be scheduled after the French Grand Prix: a date where he delivered only Honda’s second MotoGP triumph since 2023. All his cousins and relatives gathered, and they made the habitual group photo (“It is interesting each year to see who is new to the family and who has passed away.”). On this occasion, one of his aunts on his father’s side is missing. He suddenly becomes more wistful at the passage of time. “Life goes on,” he shrugs.

We first spoke for an interview at Valencia in 2015, the final race of his crowning Moto2 campaign for Aki Ajo’s team. In Spain 10 years ago, he talked of firm career goals, of being the first back-to-back title winner in the class (which he managed…and is still the only one to date) and impressions of being the most decorated French rider in the history of the FIM world championship.

Seasons have passed. Nine of them in MotoGP riding four different motorcycles but the gravitas of Le Mans 2025, with his parents at the circuit in a rare appearance and the full grandstand of fans on the start straight rejoicing in the underdog sentiment of the moment, somehow feels definitive. Johann agrees. “It’s 10 years…and clearly the victory in Le Mans was just one victory, but it is something that can make your whole career,” he says. “It’s not fair to compare a victory to a title…but the way it came – and the place it came – makes some history.”

Zarco had been forced off-track on the first lap, so his comeback was even more staggering as the rain continued to fall. His tyre gamble on that occasion was unequivocal as rivals pulled into the pitlane to change bikes and he motored from last place up the order, cheered boisterously by the sold-out attendance.

“When I consider this full picture of my career, I’m super-happy because it is like it is unexpected,” he adds and in recognition of a decade in the premier class, trying to ensure he is not just a one-win-wonder. “[On the day] you think ‘it’s raining, something is possible here…’ and you don’t realise how big it can be. If we said 10 years ago this would happen, I don’t know how I would have felt about it. In 2015, if you said I’d still be racing in 2025 then I’m not sure I would have believed it.”

He gets reflective about Le Mans. He had qualified on the front row in 2017 and as a MotoGP rookie with the satellite Tech3 Yamaha. The thick air of excitement and expectation in Sarthe powered a maiden MotoGP podium that weekend. “To do that in Le Mans?! Wow,” he says. “It was a feeling of being on top of the world. On top of my world, which was enough. It was what I wanted at that moment, and from when I’d been in the world championship. These kinds of moments I race for.”

“Le Mans was the second [win], and it did not close the book; it opened it to the possibility of a third, a fourth or a fifth.”

The tension was as dense as the Le Mans campsite fire smoke a year later with the black Yamaha this time sitting P1 on the start grid. “I keep that race in my mind,” he admits in his heavily accented English, “because I made Pole Position but crashed in the race. The feeling of pressure…I remember being on pole and being so focused on the victory. Maybe too much. I controlled my nerves much less than I did in 2025.”

Zarco would have to wait until Phillip Island in 2023 for that elusive first MotoGP chequered flag and in the fourth and final year, steering a Pramac Ducati. That wintery day in Australia was “a big relief because at least I had one victory to put in the pocket”.

But Le Mans 2025 and the LCR Honda man’s clever racecraft provided a reminder that he was not on the shelf, and his constant performances as Honda’s best MotoGP rider could put him in a position for glory. “Le Mans was the second [win], and it did not close the book; it opened it to the possibility of a third, a fourth or a fifth. I love to be constant, but also try to catch chances when they come. If anything, I will be even more open: it is a way to open a big mental break.”

Two weeks on, Zarco then seized an eyebrow-raising runner-up slot at the British GP at Silverstone. The results created all manner of conjecture that Honda was making big gains to return as the grand prix force they used to be. Reality would swiftly arrive, but the #5 had already banked a lot of credit.

Zarco’s bright career twilight comes partly through his personal situation, which included a residential move to Andorra and taking charge of his own contract dealings. “I try to keep the focus on the details and the desire for performance but when I started to manage my career by myself I could earn more and save more.” An Andorran address means he joins almost half of the MotoGP grid in the Pyrenees fiscal and sporting oasis but he was late to the show.

“I was racing for the passion and the drive to have results…without getting what I should have,” he explains. “Now, I’m in the right area to be paid as a MotoGP rider…and I am not losing it all! It’s a big breath because you organise your life to perform, and to be judged all the time by that performance. I’m used to it, but to always be thinking ‘what should I be doing to be better?’ is not a quiet life! The intensity now is OK for me. I’m enjoying my life much more. If things are not super-perfect [in MotoGP] then I am able to swallow it better than before. What makes me happy the most is having control of my super-fast bike and that it can take me to the top.”

What gets Zarco out of bed every day for a continued MotoGP existence? “Of feeling good inside,” he answers, “and in my training I still have this belief of progress even at 35 years old.”