MotoGP Mandalika: Zarco relishing the advantage, ‘tricky race in the group’

Johann Zarco sealed a successful day for Pramac Racing by joining teammate Jorge Martin on the IndonesianGP front row.

While the Frenchman suffered an early crash as FP4 fired up at the Mandalika International Street Circuit on Saturday, a red flag for Alex Rins’ flaming Suzuki gave Zarco breathing space to regroup before setting out for a dominant run.

The Pramac rider claimed third in the final practice before repeating the achievement in qualifying, just three-tenths separating him from countryman and pole-sitter Fabio Quartararo for the first race on the archipelago in 25 years.

“It started already on Friday,” Zarco said of his promising weekend in Indonesia. “I get the good lap in FP2 and no stress in FP3 was useful. Then, during the afternoon with this crash in FP4, that it seems I touch a bit of oil from Rins because the area where I was with the bike, I couldn’t have crashed normally. When I came back to the pitbox was good to have the red flag to breathe and keep calm. Then in the end FP4 was a good session because I could try out the tyres. For me it worked quite well.

“Qualifying, after the first tyre, I saw that the ’31 will be hard to do and so for the second tyre I tried to follow some good one but I was not the only one to think like this. But the last lap Bastianini was in front, I really tried to do my best and to get this ’31.3, make me pretty happy.”

Zarco’s front running pace across the weekend comes after a rollercoaster visit to Qatar for the start of the season which saw the majority of Desmosedici GP22’s fall short of their expected potential.

“We keep working on the ’22 bike and it’s true that for the start we were struggling a bit in Qatar,” he admitted on his season opening performance. “The