The Malaysian Grand Prix presented itself as an excellent opportunity for redemption for Yamaha and Friday’s free practice did not disappoint expectations. Although Franco Morbidelli narrowly missed out on Q2, his teammate Fabio Quartararo managed to gain direct access to the second qualifying phase, which awards pole.
“I’m surprised, because I never thought I’d do a 1’58″3 on Friday,” said the Frenchman, satisfied with his performance. “We are less than two tenths away from third place. Surprised by the time attack and the pace. How do I explain this? I do not know. Honestly, there are things you can’t understand. I believe that sometimes we try to change many things and look for things that aren’t there.”
“Obviously you can’t get much more in terms of aerodynamics by just changing the settings. This pushes me to change many things. Here we remained at our base and did not change anything else. I think this is positive, but I would really like to know why we managed to have an excellent Friday”, continues Quartararo, who appears perplexed despite being happy with the result.
During the sessions, Yamaha uses the time to test new components, which regularly meet with negative feedback from the riders. Quartararo is starting to look askance at all these tests: “I have the impression that they need a lot more data and that they aren’t completely listening to my sensations. There are times when I can understand them, such as testing a muffler. We tried it once and found it was worse. You don’t have to try it two or three more times because you know it doesn’t work. I think it’s important for them to understand and turn the situation around when something goes wrong.”
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing
If the situation continues to be complicated, Yamaha could take advantage of the concessions for next year. In this regard, the Frenchman dreams of having more freedom: “I would like a free engine, it was there in the past. I’m not sure, but it’s more about what Yamaha needs. We need more tests, I don’t know if we have concessions, but there are six days of tests and I will be there. But for me whatever Yamaha needs, that’s where we need to push. The possibility of using more engine could help us a lot, with different specifications. Whatever we can get, we’ll take it.”
El Diablo however he prefers to look to the weekend and believes he can have good ambitions in view of the race: “I think we have a minimum margin, not much, but enough to improve in some corners. Sometimes you arrive at a track where you don’t expect to do well, like in India. Here we have always been fast, but it is difficult to understand why we can’t always have this feeling. When the tire is used, we can feel it a lot, this is quite a positive thing, but on some tracks where the grip is very strong, when we put on a new tire we don’t improve and we don’t make a step forward.”
“The expectation now is to fight for the podium, because the pace is very good. Obviously it’s not easy because there are many riders and we are in the top 5 or top 6 in terms of pace. I didn’t look closely, but that’s what I can understand. I expect and hope to have a good qualifying where we are in the first two rows, then it will be a matter of managing the first laps, the tyres… to be honest a top 5 would be an excellent result for us. I’m a little surprised by the fact that generally the first part is better and the second less. This year the opposite happened, so we have to find answers to our questions, but I think it will be very important to be smart in the future. I know that Yamaha has many people developing the bike, but we have to take big risks to achieve better results in 2024,” Quartararo concludes firmly.
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