MotoGP | Quartararo: “My pace was better than the KTMs, but I couldn’t pass them”

It’s hard to rejoice over a ninth place, but Fabio Quartararo’s weekend so far in Misano has been without a doubt one of the best weekends of this season for Yamaha, if not the best overall. Having entered Q2 directly, “El Diablo” placed tenth on the grid and then gained a position in the Sprint. Which also earned him a point.

It is true that this year he also happened to get better results, but they were often the result of elimination races. This time, however, it is a placement that reflects what his potential was over the weekend of the Grand Prix of San Marino and the Riviera di Rimini. A small step forward for the Iwata manufacturer and the positive thing is that for the 2021 world champion it is not due to the private test carried out on the Romagna track two weeks ago.

“To be honest, I think the test was useful for FP1, but we are running with a completely different set-up and chassis than in the test. So, for me, the test was useful because we tried a different engine. In the test we tried some different chassis, none of which were good, in fact they were worse. But I don’t think the test really helped the performance this weekend. It did in the first laps, for example in T3, because in the fast corners you have to be very precise,” Quartararo said when he arrived in the press room to give his feelings to the journalists.

In any case, today he had the satisfaction of getting behind the Aprilias and playing with the KTMs. In fact, he probably could have beaten them if the RC16s didn’t have more rear grip than his M1: “I think they’re quite lucky to have a lot of traction. But unfortunately for us it’s completely the opposite. The rear slides completely and today I did the whole race pushing on the front tyre”.

“I was behind Jack Miller and unfortunately I couldn’t make my lines. I braked like him, but he accelerated better than me, having more grip and more power coming out of the corners. My pace was much better than Binder and Jack, but unfortunately it’s like in 2022: you can’t try to overtake. We can’t attack, or at least we can’t try. The result, unfortunately, is this,” he added.

The French rider is very satisfied with the performance he managed to show in qualifying, at least as much as one can be for a tenth time: “I’m happy with my lap time. I didn’t make any mistakes, I was pushing like crazy. But you know, when you see some riders making mistakes in front of you and still doing a better time than you, it’s frustrating. But I feel that for the bike we have at the moment we did our best”, he concluded.