Le Mans (AFP)

Two Frenchmen, Fabio Quartararo and Johann Zarco, are fighting this year for victory in MotoGP but their succession has already been announced with Lorenzo Fellon, 16, who is playing his first season in Moto3 this year, stepping up to the supreme category.

For the first time this weekend, Fellon is racing on the Bugatti circuit at Le Mans as part of the French motorcycle Grand Prix, a legendary circuit which he does not know yet because he has dressed his weapons in Spain.

"I started riding motorcycles at the age of five on a kart track," recalls the young Avignonnais, during an interview with AFP at Le Mans.

He quickly took to the game thanks to a spirit of "competitor" and a very favorable family environment since his father, Laurent Fellon, himself a former rider, prepared competition motorcycles and managed the career of Johann Zarco.

"Then I went to Spain to do the Catalan championship for two years, it went well and I was able to sign my first contract to do the Spanish Moto3 championship".

Because, like Quartararo, for lack of an organized French sector, it is beyond the Pyrenees that Lorenzo Fellon has participated in competitions for young people who are considered the most demanding.

He is making his debut this year in the Moto3 World Championship with the team of Paolo Simoncelli, the father of Italian rider Marco Simoncelli, who was killed at the Malaysian Grand Prix in 2011.

"I knew that the level was very high and from the first practice, the pilots are already in the qualification, they are already in the rhythm", he notes.

The championship has been dominated since the start of the season by the Spaniard Pedro Acosta, also 16, who is aiming this weekend for his fourth straight victory in five races while he too is a "rookie" (beginner) in the category.

- School aside -

"I rode with him in the Red Bull Rookies Cup before and I fought with him," recalls Lorenzo Fellon.

"If he is in front, that means that he has worked more than us and it is up to us, that is to say me, to work even more. Because if he was able to do it, that means that we also, by working more (we can do it) ".

"Someone who, like Acosta, wins everything from the start of the season, that puts my morale up a bit because everyone has the same bikes and it's just riding. Frankly, it was tough. not to focus on him but on my work, ”he admits.

“I knew it wasn't going to be easy this year but not so much. I could have worked more during the winter break. Now I got through the first one, so to speak, we had a few beatings and it allowed me to see things from a different perspective and to tell myself that there is only one way to get there, and that is to work and that I will have to go and find what I want " .

The fact that two French riders are at the highest level of MotoGP does not intimidate him, quite the contrary.

"It brings even more motivation to say to yourself + if I work, maybe one day it will be me +", he declares, noting with irony that none of the fans gathered at the entrance of the circuit to see the drivers. on their arrival does not recognize him yet.

The young pilot with piercing blue eyes and a "Peaky Blinders" style haircut admits that it is difficult to reconcile high-level sport with his studies.

In first, he now follows correspondence courses.

"My mother has more of an educational side" than her father who was always immersed in the world of motorcycles, confides Lorenzo.

"As long as I can, I prefer to devote myself entirely to motorcycling and I put school aside a bit, although it was not too easy for my mother to accept it."

jld / ng / dep

© 2021 AFP