MotoGP | Quartararo worried about excessive tire degradation

One could almost say that 2024 is a continuation of last season for Fabio Quartararo, who continues to struggle despite the innovations brought by Yamaha. The Frenchman did not go beyond 12th place in the Lusail Sprint and sees no improvements on the horizon in view of Sunday's race.

Already on Friday, El Diablo was struggling and disappointedly confessed to expecting something more, but on Saturday in Qatar another problem arose: tire degradation. “In terms of positions, I expected better given the pace we had in testing and over the weekend, but the way it ended is really bizarre. Having degradation like that in the Sprint was very strange, I don't know how we will manage it in Sunday's race, because it was already critical enough to finish the Sprint and it will be the same tire as the race.”

“I don't want to be negative, but when we see that we have such significant degradation in the Sprint and you have no other choice for the rear tire in the long race, the problem is no longer the position, but how you can finish the race. It's starting to get really complicated. The others didn't have this degradation, Aleix Espargaro did 1'52″7 on the last lap, we did 53. The question is: why do we have this degradation and the others don't?”, asks Quartararo, who now seems without hopes.

While 12th position may not seem so bad, it actually hides a much bigger problem for the Niçois, that of tire degradation: “It slides a lot, you can't go into a corner, you can't come back quickly, it doesn't stop. It's in every braking phase and every corner. In the tests there was a small degradation, but I was faster, in the Sprint simulation I was four or five seconds faster than today.”

“We have never experienced the degradation we had today, especially in the Sprint. It's only 11 laps, if I had had the soft tire I could have understood, but it was the race tire and we had a lot of problems. It's normal for the grip to be different compared to the tests, but I've never really felt such a huge difference,” concluded a visibly disappointed Quartararo.