Fabio Quartararo made history last weekend by becoming the first Frenchman to win the MotoGP world title, and Hervé Poncharal underscored the Yamaha rider’s performance, admitting he had shown signs of what could happen as early as 2020.
In statements on the Nantes Maville website, the Tech3 boss recalled other French drivers who were in the maximum category, but without ever having achieved the expression that Quartararo had:
– Speedbike GPs have been around since 1949 and there has never been a French world champion in the top category. There were some riders like Christian Sarron or Regis Laconi who won a 500cc race. There was Johann too [Zarco] who did great things with us [Tech3 – Yamaha] on his debut, but he has never won a race or fought for the world title.
For Poncharal, he even classified the performance as “unique” and reminded the French Motogp fans who had obviously lost hope of winning the title: “What Fabio has achieved this year and what we could already feel last year is unique. I think the French MotoGP fans were a bit resigned. It has already been said: we get great things from time to time. We can win in the lower categories (125cc, Moto3, 250cc and Moto2) but not in the upper category.
Then the Tech3 manager remembered some phases of the championship and the respective dominators and again emphasized the lack of “someone” French who could have such an influence: “There was an American era in 1980, an Australian era in the 1990s, then the Italian era and then the Spaniards for ten years, but we’ve never seen a driver who was so profiled that we could say, ‘He could take the championship’.