MotoGP championship leader Fabio Quartararo says he has a “very bad feeling” with the tyre on his Petronas Yamaha bike following Styrian Grand Prix practice on Friday.
Quartararo finished eighth in last week’s race at the same Red Bull Ring venue, having run onto the gravel at Turn 4, sending him to the back of the pack before a charge back into the top 10.
His closest title rival Andrea Dovizioso won the race and is 11-points behind, Quartararo citing Dovizioso as his biggest threat this season.
Quartararo blamed last week’s performance on brake fade at the hardest and most testing track of the year for stopping performance.
Switching from last year’s Brembo calipers to its brand new 2020 design between the two rounds may not have improved the all-around performance of his bike, as he set the 14th best overall time after Friday’s pair of sessions.
“It was a very difficult day,” said Quartararo.
“We had a very bad feeling with the tyre and we don’t know why.
“This is quite frustrating, but in the end we need to work and to see where the problem is.
“There is a loss of performance because our lap time is really bad, and we saw Dovi do a very fast time this morning on lap fifteen of the tyre.
“I’m trying to think zero about the championship and try to find a solution for this race because I’m feeling so bad on the bike.
“We need to see what the problem is, because we’re struggling a lot compared to the others.
“It looks like we’re overheating the rear tyre too much, and that’s where we make our lap time with the Yamaha.”
Yamaha withdraws engine request
Factory Yamaha team boss Lin Jarvis believes the team has found the cause of the engine problems it has suffered at the start of 2020, and has withdrawn its request to open its sealed engines on safety grounds.
“One week ago Yamaha made a request to the MotoGP technical director to open our engines and replace some parts for safety issues,” said Jarvis.
“We requested to replace the valves in the engines we had used in the first two rounds.
“We were requested to give more information, both from the manufacturer of the values and more specific information on their properties.
“In the week since that meeting we investigated deeply and we were unable to provide the document requested, but we learned much more about the issues.
“What we will do in the meantime now that we’ve discovered the probable cause is manage the issue, and we believe we can do that by a combination of engine settings and engine changes.”
The Race understands that means a problem was identified in the valves installed in some but not all of the 20 sealed engines, and that a combination of rev limiting and engine rotation will allow them to ensure that suspect engines are only used in practice sessions until the end of 2020 and not in races.
