MotoGP | Quartararo: “We try too many things, I feel more like a tester than a rider”

Fabio Quartararo has expressed his frustration that Yamaha is testing “too many things” on his bike during MotoGP race weekends. The Japanese manufacturer is undertaking a major development program to get out of the current crisis, experimenting with a wide range of new parts for the M1.

Having gained a number of advantages under MotoGP’s new concession system, Yamaha is also trialling new parts during grand prix events, after first testing them in private tests. However, the 2021 champion believes this approach is backfiring, as he is constantly having to test different specifications of the bike without having enough time to properly evaluate them.

“Before the Sprint we were trying too many things, switching from one bike to another and I was going to qualifying without any reference,” he said The Devil. “With one bike I had to ride one way, with the other another way. So I was completely lost. We’re already struggling a lot more than usual, but I was really lost. I said I want to have a base that I know more or less and in the Sprint it went much better. It’s still not very good, but at least we finished not too far from Jack Miller.”

For Quartararo, the problem is not the excessive number of new things he has to test, but the substantial difference between one bike and another, which complicates his job at a time when he should also be working on pure performance. For example, the Frenchman revealed that during the British Grand Prix he had to constantly switch from a heavy M1 with better braking performance to another lighter bike that didn’t stop as well.

“It’s not too many new elements, but too many different bikes in every single lap,” he explained. “I do four laps, change bikes, four more laps, change bikes. We do the time attack, but with which bike? So it’s complicated. Two years ago we had the same bike all year. Also last year, at the end of the season, we knew the bike was not the same, but we kept our base and I’m the one who takes the bike to the extreme limit. At the moment we can’t do that because I have no idea what the limit of the bike is.”

Quartararo explained the reasons behind Yamaha’s rapid development, saying that new parts usually offer better performance or help solve problems with the existing bike. However, this year hasn’t always been the case for Yamaha, and his work on race weekends makes him feel more like a test rider: “It’s too much, but sometimes you expect things to be better and not worse.”

“Or let’s say that sometimes we have new parts and we expect them to be much better. Sometimes the one you expect the most from is the one that doesn’t actually bring anything positive. At the moment, I think I’ve been more of a tester than a rider during the last races. At the moment I prefer to focus a little more on trying to be as fast as possible, because it’s been a long time since I’ve used the same bike for two days in a row,” explained the Nice native.