MotoGP 2021 world champion Fabio Quartararo says that it’ll be “impossible” to add to his impressive record at Jerez this weekend.
The venue, named after Spanish motorcycling legend Angel Nieto, was the stage for Quartararo’s first MotoGP pole in 2019, his first win in 2020, and another win the weekend after (as it was a COVID 19-conditioned double-header). He should’ve likely won in 2021, too, but for arm pump, and was a close second to Pecco Bagnaia in 2022.
In the 2023 edition, however, he ended the opening day of action a very distant 16th, eight tenths off the pace – and faces a big task on Saturday morning if he has any hope now of turning around his Spanish Grand Prix weekend.
Making things even worse for Quartararo – who has never qualified his Yamaha worse than second in five appearances – is that he still doesn’t understand the root cause of the new M1’s issues despite the bike continuing to lose out just about everywhere.
No longer handing a big advantage to rivals on the start-finish straights thanks to a more powerful engine, it seems that the cost of that engine has been, as many predicted, a further loss of Yamaha’s sweet-handling corner speed and handling everywhere else – leaving him with a machine that’s become a lot more aggressive and physical to ride.
“Difficult to say what was wrong,” the Frenchman admitted at the end of his day, “but I mean everything… the feeling we had today on the bike, every time I was going into a corner, I didn’t know if I was going to finish it.
“In the last lap I was improving, but feeling already every time on the limit. But the last lap I did okay. Whatever happened, happened. And at Turn 7 I lost the front and went wide.
“But the problem is that we don’t know why we are that slow and the bike is super aggressive, we are missing turning. So yeah, it’s difficult.
“To be honest, every year we are losing our strong points from the past. I’d say the turning and corner speed we had four years ago was better, more stability, and that’s what we lose.
“And actually here the top speed is not so bad because you come from a fast corner so you don’t have so much wheelie and it helps.
“But it’s not only that, the problem is many, many other things and this is one of them, that the corner speed we are carrying is not good and the bike is super aggressive… not because we are going so fast and it is aggressive but we are not going so fast and [yet] we are shaking a lot.”
And, with a more compressed MotoGP weekend schedule in 2023 that sees qualifying move to Saturday morning and only another 30 minutes of practice time to come ahead of the sprint race, he dejectedly admitted that he believes that it’ll be “impossible” to repeat last year’s podium finish without a substantial improvement.
“In the morning I think we were a little bit better,” he explained of his stronger FP1, “but let’s say we will have to figure it out tonight why we are struggling that much, where we lose because we still didn’t have time to really check right now.
“So this evening we’re going to check exactly where we lose and hopefully we will find a solution. And even my riding style for sure, I can modify many things at least to try to be better.
“It is bad to say this, but even on the pace we are not good. If the pace was good and time attack was bad, you can still manage.
“Say the team tells me the pace is not so bad… but the pace is bad because with a new tyre I was slower than many guys. So at the moment today it is impossible to make the kind of race like last year.”
Team-mate Franco Morbidelli ended the day two tenths behind Quartararo in 17th overall.
