The French Grand Prix is certainly one of the most awaited events for Fabio Quartararo, home driver at the Bugatti in Le Mans. The reigning world champion arrives at the race on the historic track across the Alps as leader of the standings and is one of the big favorites, but as usual it will be the unpredictability that dominates, with opponents who can undoubtedly have their say.
“It is always special to experience the home Grand Prix, I will give my best”, Quartararo begins referring to his home race, where he will be surrounded by his audience. “A home gp, however, can give you more pressure and more stress, I will try to live it in a normal way and entertain the fans. I think no Frenchman has ever won here in MotoGP, so I don’t know if it’s an advantage like playing at home in football, but I think not. Obviously it’s always special to see the fans cheering for us, but I don’t think it’s an advantage. In football you can hear people cheering for you, while here you don’t hear while you compete, but of course we will do our best “.
The warmth of the public will be important, but it will undoubtedly affect many other factors, from the competitiveness of the rivals to the weather: “It is difficult to know who will be able to prevail this weekend, Le Mans is a totally different track than Jerez. The important thing will be to work well from Friday and then find the good tires for the race, have a good pace and do excellent qualifying, which are super important for us ”. “Honestly it is clear that I would prefer a dry race, but I think we made some big steps forward in Mandalika, but also in Portimao on Saturday morning. If it rains it wouldn’t be a problem ”.
Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing
Photo by: Dorna
However, on the eve of the French Grand Prix it is the question of Suzuki, which has officially expressed its willingness to leave MotoGP at the end of this season. But the Hamamatsu manufacturer would not be the only one to abandon, even Yamaha could find itself an “orphan” of its satellite team, thus being left with only two bikes. However, this would not be a problem for Quartararo: “If I stay with Yamaha next year, at the moment if there were only two bikes, it wouldn’t be a problem for me. At the moment we are struggling a bit to compare the data between us and the second team, so it would not be a problem for us ”.
The other major topic of discussion at Le Mans is tire pressure, which has seen Ducati at the center of the controversy. Pecco Bagnaia won in Jerez with a pressure lower than the allowed limit, however there is no real rule that establishes it, so he did not run into penalties. In responding to the accusations, Gigi Dall’Igna also said that other riders had also won in the same conditions and here is Quartararo taking sides with Ducati.
“My program at Jerez was to stay ahead of Pecco and race alone,” explains El Diablo, also referring to the pressure management problem. “But you know that if you go in front you also have to prepare for the possibility of being behind, so you need the lowest possible pressure. If you are behind, however, the pressure rises a lot more and the same happened to me in Portugal, where I had the lowest pressure for the whole race. I think it will be difficult if they establish a regulation, because you know that if you start with too high blood pressure your race can go either extremely good or extremely bad. On the rear it’s hard to control and I think you have to try to find something with Michelin that doesn’t give you so many problems when you are behind but that allows you to find the right balance when you are alone ”.
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