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Fabio Quartararo having his first race crash of the 2021 MotoGP season in his first grand prix as champion slots in nicely into a recent MotoGP trend – but he sees the race as much more worrying than just a ‘title hangover’.
Of the last five MotoGP campaigns where the champion was decided before the final race, four had the champion non-score after the coronation.
Marc Marquez clinched the 2016 and 2018 titles at Motegi with three races to spare and proceeded to crash out at the following race at Phillip Island on both occasions.
And last year, after clinching the title at Valencia, Joan Mir retired from the Portimao finale with an electronics problem after contact with Francesco Bagnaia scrambled the traction control.
Quartararo’s exit from this year’s Portimao race while running sixth fits nicely into the above pattern, and there’s even a reasonable common thread.
But when asked about said pattern and whether it indicated a ‘championship hangover’, Quartararo was adamant: “To be honest, no, because this morning my pace was really good, all the weekend was good, apart from Saturday afternoon…
“To be honest when I crashed, I was just ‘let’s see what happens’.
“I was on the limit and I couldn’t make the corner, but I knew that if I was waiting [by running straight on] I would’ve been overtaken by the others and I just gave it a try, and the try was not working.”
That does indeed point to something Quartararo has in common with Marquez in 2016 and Mir last year. While Marquez’s race post-coronation in 2018 was ended when he was collected by Johann Zarco, in the 2016 case he admitted he’d been taking more risks than he would’ve if the title was still on the line.
Likewise, Mir’s incident with Bagnaia last year, promoted by a “really aggressive, a bit too much” overtaking attempt, surely doesn’t happen if the title isn’t sewn up.
After this weekend’s race, winner Bagnaia, who was Quartararo’s biggest title rival, summed it up nicely to MotoGP.com: “I’m sure that if I won in Misano [last time out], today he finishes the race.”
But while Quartararo’s crash, his only race crash of the season so far, didn’t seem to rattle him massively, the way the race had played out certainly did.
Quartararo had qualified an uncharacteristically low seventh for reasons he didn’t entirely understand and paid the price on Sunday. Having dropped to eighth at the start, he picked up two places courtesy of Iker Lecuona running himself and Pol Espargaro wide at Turn 1 – but further progress was like pulling teeth.
And he made a point of comparing his race to how Bagnaia fared after starting 11th in the MotoGP race in April at the same track, the Italian having made no progress off the line yet managing to then fight through to second place.
“When you are stuck behind a Ducati and you are just… honestly, I could go much faster all the race, I could really have had the pace from Pecco for sure, but when you are stuck behind…” said Quartararo.
“I remembered, he started here 11th [in April] and to overtake was not a big issue.
“But for me, I stayed 15 laps behind [Pramac Ducati rider Jorge] Martin even if he was riding one second slower, I couldn’t overtake.
“To be honest, we are too far with the [top] speed that we have. In that kind of track, where we miss the qualifying, we are just pushing on the limit, and I made a lot of mistakes.”
One of the mistakes was the crash. Another came a few laps prior when he ran wide at Turn 13 while in Martin’s wheeltracks, dropping behind the Spaniard’s team-mate Johann Zarco.
It was uncharacteristic of the super-reliable 2021-spec Quartararo, who had proven himself not only a minimal-error rider but the only one on a Yamaha who could reliably make his way through the order in MotoGP races – compared to the famous struggles of his now former team-mate Maverick Vinales.
Portimao, however, is more ‘single-line’ than most venues, and the resulting race in which he was unable to make progress left Quartararo clearly alarmed.
“It’s a real shame that we have this kind of difficulties because the bike is so good to ride, but with this speed, you can’t make any mistake,” he said.
“You know, at the end during the year you can bring new chassis. You have an evolution in the Jerez test, in the Misano test, in the Barcelona test. But you can’t have an evolution on the engine [because the spec is frozen].
“I think they [Yamaha] should push so much, so much on the engine, because to be honest for the future it’s not going to be easy.”
Yamaha’s lack of top speed compared to its V4-engined rival bikes is part of its DNA, and the trade-off this year has proven enough to propel Quartararo to a fairly comfortable title.
Yet with Ducati now having an on-song Bagnaia, having clinched the manufacturers’ title and set to pick up the teams’ title as well, Quartararo has indicated Yamaha should be willing to compromise some of the M1’s calling-card characteristics in order to make the make it more competitive on the straights.
“I see clear weak points on our bike that the others don’t have,” he admitted.
“But also I see clear positive points that some others don’t have.
“Even if we lost in one way, we need to gain on that top speed, because to overtake is just a nightmare. We just can’t overtake.”
