The last three races had given Yamaha the illusion of having taken the right path. However, the Motegi weekend gave Fabio Quartararo and the Iwata manufacturer a rude awakening. On a track with a “stop and go” nature like that of Motegi, “El Diablo” feared that the M1’s lack of grip might emerge and so it did.
The performances were not up to the level of those highlighted in Misano and Mandalika, but as in Romagna an unpleasant episode occurred, because in the last meters he found himself running out of fuel, thus losing a position to Johann Zarco’s Honda and finding himself 12th in the final standings of the MotoGP Japanese Grand Prix.
“It’s unacceptable, twice in three races. It’s bad enough that we struggled this weekend, but running out of fuel is a bit ridiculous. But we need to understand why the lights aren’t coming on, why the strategy isn’t working. And ‘It was a very complicated race, we gave our all, but after this episode we are clearly in trouble,” Quartararo said when he met journalists at the end of the day.
When he was then asked if he had received any warning from his bike, he continued: “We have a strategy: I have to do two laps with map 1, then I change it. Then there is a light to check: if it is green, I can go back up. If it’s yellow I have to go down and if it’s red I have to go down even further. The problem is that there’s always a green light, so it’s like having no light at all.”
Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing
Photo credit: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Among other things, he found himself on foot despite having reduced the power with a more conservative map: “A little, but I don’t feel it on the bike. At Misano at least I had a warning light on, but here I didn’t have any light on, so it’s annoying. If they don’t show it to me, it’s a bit like not knowing. It’s up to me to reduce the power, but with the team’s instructions, which weren’t there. Let’s say the instructions didn’t work.”
Just one word is enough, therefore, to summarize the Motegi weekend: “Castrophic. We don’t understand why, but we depend more on the track than on our bike. Only the KTM managed to keep the Ducatis at bay a bit, but then there are ten seconds between eighth and ninth. We arrived within 30 seconds of the winner, so the numbers are starting to add up.”
A gap that was probably even larger than what Fabio would have expected, who already on the eve of the weekend had not seemed too optimistic for this weekend: “Even just comparing ourselves with the Honda, we clearly have grip problems. They are much better from this point of view. I didn’t think we’d finish so far away. Already on the second lap, it seems that the others have new tires and we have at the end of their lives. It’s difficult to understand this big difference.”
Among other things, it was a very demanding race also from a physical point of view: “I died. Halfway through the race my arms were gone and I had pain everywhere. This is also due to the little grip we have. When it’s no longer there grip, the bike doesn’t change direction, not even when braking: it doesn’t stop and you push hard, so the race becomes very long.”
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