Fabio Quartararo, who last season brought Yamaha their first MotoGP title since 2015 (Jorge Lorenzo), ended the year recommending to Iwata’s engineers to remedy the lack of power of the M1, a problem that now seems to be inherent in the Japanese prototype . However, his demands never had the desired effect and the Nice driver spent winter testing complaining about the lack of efficiency of the brand’s technical department, which had a year and a half to revitalize the powertrain, but the new one. it offered a performance practically identical to the previous one.
The contrast is tremendous between that Quartararo at the beginning of the season with his head down and the one who shows up at next week’s Sachsenring. In the weekend that will mark the exact half of the season he arrives as the leader of the world rankings, after having conquered four podiums in the last five races, including two wins. This strength has nothing to do with that of the beginning of the year, in which he only got on the podium in one of the first four races.
One could try to convince the fact that the reason for the change in trend lies in the mechanics, but Quartararo prefers to take part of the responsibility and recognizes that these difficulties of the bike, in terms of speed, have devolved him more than necessary, up to the extreme of not being in a position to offer the best version of himself.
“Nothing has changed since February. What has changed is that at the beginning of this season I was not mentally focused. I saw that Yamaha hadn’t made any evolutions, anger took my head and blocked me. I was holding back a bit, because in 18 months of evolution the bike hadn’t gained even one kilometer of top speed. I lived it badly because in a year I went from overtaking Alex Rins on the straight to seeing how the stickers peeled off, “said the reigning world champion in a chat with Motorsport.com which took place a few days ago at Montmelo. .
Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
“In Qatar and Argentina I could have done a lot better, but starting from Austin I accepted what we had, that the bike was slower and hadn’t improved. But I set out to get the best possible result with what I had, ”said the # 20 before talking a bit about his recovery process:“ In Austin I finished seventh, fighting with Marc. This was a good result for me. Then came the victory in Portimao and I said to myself stop talking about top speed and concentrate on what you have to do, which is to go as fast as possible and then we’ll see how far we get ”.
In the same way that Quartararo does not need to intone the “mea culpa” for this start with a lack of focus, he does not even have to give explanations for the formula used for this change of mentality that comes from the work he started in 2019 with a psychologist . This time, however, he applies these techniques alone: “I did this change completely by myself. I worked with a psychologist a while ago and learned a lot. I have learned that there is no point in being angry about something that cannot be changed. For me personally it was worse, to work in the garage too. Even more so because anger doesn’t help you get good results ”, concluded the reigning world champion.
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