“Raise my level to be on the podium regularly, that’s the goal of my season”, swears Zarco

How would you sum up your weekend?
Johann Zarco : It was a great weekend. I already fought for the podium on Saturday (4th in the sprint, editor’s note), it gave me confidence and I knew I could be even faster on Sunday because I had a good pace. I hope to be as competitive on the Sachsenring next week.

This is your third podium in six races. How do you explain these good results?
Raise my level to be on the podium regularly, that’s the goal of my season. It’s always difficult, it requires a lot of energy and concentration. Increasing your level already in the sprint gives you confidence for the race on Sunday. To give me more comfort, it is necessary to improve the qualifications to be in the first two rows.

Do you think you can continue like this?
With all the good work we do with the team, we manage to have confidence and a good feeling on the bike. We will still progress because when we take a small step forward, we manage to hold it and suddenly when we take another one, it’s really to move forward and not a sudden yes, a sudden no. And it does me good. I hope to hold this.

Your start was complicated and you fell to 12th place. Did you think you could make it to the podium?
There is less stress than in a sprint because I tell myself that I have more time to come back up. I had confidence with my medium rear tire and the others were strong but I saw that they made more mistakes than in the sprint. I said to myself “stay focused, keep your lines well and you will be able to gain places”.

You fought a great battle with Luca Marini. It was difficult to p him and then outrun him…
I was expecting to be able to escape better, but I was sliding a lot and got out of the way a few times in some corners, it was really hard. But in the last two laps I saw that I had taken a 5 tenths lead and I said to myself: “It’s good, stay focused”.

From next week, we have to get back on the bike in Germany and then in the process it will be the Netherlands. Is it good to chain?
It’s a good test to prepare for the overseas tour that we will have from September. I think there is a way to repeat good results over these three intense weeks. We will have to recover well and live them to the fullest, knowing that afterwards we will have a break during the summer. It can give us a taste of the management that will have to be done from September to November.

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