This is surely a mega bomb released from motorsport.com after a chaotic Summer where Johann Zarco was fired from KTM and seemed to be unemployed not only for 2019 but also 2020. French’s best friend in this case is Takaaki Nakagami, as long as the Japanese is about to miss last 3 races after his home Grand Prix in Japan next week.

Honda LCR rider has indeed to go under surgery for his shoulder with an operation planned to be fully fit for the next Championship; this is a similar situation had with Marc Marquez at the end of 2018, with reigning World Champion who made the same thing with a long recovery period after that. This is why Takaaki decided to do the operation as soon as possible, even before the end of the Championship.

That means Lucio Cecchinello is forced to find another rider to replace him and the choice is apparently Johann Zarco, with the French who is gonna have a big chance to shine again after a complicated season where he was never fast and even fired from KTM with still one year of contract. It is a big news also looking on 2020, because it could mean that Honda is seriously interested on having Zarco in his team for the next year, even if we do not know in which modality. A bad news for Yamaha on the other side, as long as Lin Jarvis identified in Johann the guy to replace Jonas Folger as tester.

We will see what is gonna happen, but of course the scenario is really interesting, with Johann Zarco who surely cannot miss a big chance like this, especially for his future, that seemed to be more dark than ever after his separation with KTM.