until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
MotoGP world champion Fabio Quartararo’s description of Yamaha’s Australian Grand Prix Friday practice performance wasn’t bursting with superlatives or outright swagger.
But in the context of recent months, the rapid erosion of his points lead and his apparent helplessness in the face of it, his Friday mood was a very encouraging sign for his beleaguered title defence.
Quartararo last won a race in June at the Sachsenring. Since then, he’s watched his points margin over Ducati’s Pecco Bagnaia come down from 91 points to just two across seven races.
And over that time, Quartararo has ended many Fridays resigned to what’s to come – concerned that Yamaha doesn’t have anything up its sleeve to make its bike more competitive at that weekend’s venue and expecting to be swallowed up by Ducatis in qualifying and the race.
Phillip Island was always expected to be a more Yamaha-friendly track given its fast and flowing corners, though Quartararo had refrained from pinning too much on that in advance.
Fourth in Friday practice, 0.139s off the top time set by Pramac Ducati’s Johann Zarco but four places and 0.224s ahead of Bagnaia, was promising – especially considering he said he “made quite a mistake on my fast lap so I’m pretty happy to still be in the top five”.
But what really made Quartararo buoyant was that he could see where he and Yamaha could easily go faster and had things he wanted to try on Saturday that he thought would actually make a positive difference.
Asked by The Race if Friday had been good for his confidence, Quartararo replied: “Yeah. Especially because I feel I was also riding well.
“Riding well and feeling also like I have a margin in a few corners that can make me one tenth here, one tenth there, so at the end of a race it can make a big change.
“Today was one of the first days that we really felt that we have to make a few changes because in general as soon as we start the weekend we finish the weekend with the same bike.
“Today, at this kind of track which is quite different to every track, we’ve made a few changes and have a few changes for tomorrow.”
He’s still a long way from declaring Yamaha ready to fend off the Ducatis for a race win again – pointing out that it was an odd Friday with some kerbs still wet from pre-event rain and with the teams reacclimatising to a relatively unusual track that they hadn’t visited since 2019.
Tyres also remain a question mark over a track where the performance drop-off is expected to be big – Quartararo describing the soft Michelin as “really, really soft” and intrigued by the times Suzuki’s Alex Rins did on hards.
But in the context of his own Friday work, Quartararo has an optimism not seen for a few months.
“I think our pace is quite OK,” he added.
“I’ve got a few places I think I can overtake on this track so I think it should be quite a good track.”
Given he was so despondent about his plunge outside the points in the last race in Thailand that he refused all media commitments and adopted a social media silence for most of the gap between grands prix, that mood of quiet optimism is quite a turnaround for a rider whose title bid needs a few positives at the moment.
