The Frenchman belatedly arrived in MotoGP as a 26-year-old in 2017, but as a back-to-back Moto2 champion. He immediately defied convention, leading on debut for Yamaha in Qatar before crashing, and six podiums and a pair of sixth-place championship finishes in his first two seasons saw him land a plum ride with the factory KTM outfit.

The dream team soon turned into a nightmare, poor results prompting Zarco to walk away after just 13 races, and he signed with the backmarker Avintia Ducati squad just to stay on the 2020 grid. But flashes of genius on a two-year-old bike – he was on pole at Brno – saw him ready for his redemption ride at Pramac when Jack Miller and Francesco Bagnaia graduated to the factory Ducati team.