Fabio Quartararo and Alex Rins will have at their disposal, as Motorsport.com has learned, a 2024 Yamaha B version with a new engine, chassis, swingarms and aerodynamics for the official tests on Monday after the Spanish GP.
The Iwata manufacturer has done everything to convince Fabio Quartararo that he will not be better off anywhere else than at Yamaha, obtaining an explicit renewal during the Portuguese Grand Prix which took half the paddock by surprise.
While it is clear that a significant part of the Frenchman's decision is due to the lucrative financial offer on the table, profound changes in the factory's reaction times have pushed Fabio to sign a contract that expires at the end of 2026.
Among the arguments presented to Quartararo by Lin Jarvis, the manufacturer's head on the track, there is a completely new bike that the Frenchman will be able to test this Monday in Jerez, during the first official test of the season.
“Yamaha will test a new engine, a new frame, a new swingarm and some aerodynamic elements at the test on Monday, a new bike,” a team member who knows what he is talking about told Motorsport.com.
Some of these parts have already been tested by the brand's test and development driver, the British Cal Crutchlow, last week in a private test in Barcelona. “It was a bad test,” says the same source. “Once again the bad weather (it rained for several days) played a bad joke on us,” he added.
After the Portuguese GP, as reported at the time by Motorsport.com, the Italian team's regular drivers remained to complete a day of private testing in Portimao, but bad weather, wind and dirt on the track prevented Quartararo and Alex Rins to complete more than six laps. In that test there was only one power unit in the Frenchman's test program, but this Monday both Fabio and his teammate Alex Rins will have all the new material available, the engine, the frame, the swingarm and the aerodynamic parts , demonstrating that they worked hard in Iwata.
Under the new licensing rules, Yamaha riders were able to use part of a weekend practice session to test the new engine, but although the rules allow them not to have sealed engines, they can only use nine units over the course of the season , so they are not going to waste a cartridge that may be needed later in the season.
In Monday's test, the engine will be tested with the current prototype version to see if there is a clear improvement, and little by little the other innovations will be implemented to be able to compare them and understand which ones bring benefits and where there are none, given that in the Barcelona test it was not possible to discard them due to the rain, which forced everything to be tested quickly and a few laps to be completed in the initial part of the test before the track became impassable.
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