The hope of returning to competition fighting in the lead as he did with Ducati seems to have vanished for Andrea Dovizioso. Faced with this situation, the Italian sees Fabio Quartararo as the only one who can extract the potential of the M1.
The Frenchman is the leader with 102 points, compared to 33 for his three teammates from Iwata’s team. He is the only one who has been able to win with Yamaha for more than a year, having soloed six of the seven successes for the brand since the start of the 2021 season and 13 of the 15 podiums obtained.
Andrea Dovizioso’s experience leads him to draw a parallel between the trend followed by the Iwata manufacturer and the one that worried Honda until Marc Márquez’s injury.
“At the same speed as the other bikes, the bike doesn’t accelerate, which in my opinion comes from the grip. So if you don’t pick up more speed in the middle of the corner, you can’t be fast,” Dovizioso described.
“But Fabio [Quartararo] has that strength and he’s able to really dance on every track and bring a lot of speed in the middle of the corner. It’s the only way to be fast on this bike, and even faster than in the past. If not you have the chip in your brain to ride a motorcycle like that, so you can’t be fast.”
Dovizioso had already experienced the Yamaha for a season in Tech3 ten years ago, but that didn’t help the Italian too much.
“I think the current situation at Yamaha is a bit different from 2012, in the sense that the way you have to ride to be competitive is even more extreme, given the way Fabio rides,” he observes, claiming to be close . of Valentino Rossi’s conclusions a few months ago.
“You can lose a lot or a little, but with everything you do you lose something, so you end up physically finished because you’re trying to do something that doesn’t work, so you also ride the bike stiffer.
“I think Yamaha is in a very good situation, because they won last year, they are first in the championship this year, but from my point of view they are in a very similar situation [as] Marc and Honda for the last six years or so. less,” Andrea judged.
“I don’t know if Yamaha decided to get to this situation, or if they came [unintentionally],” added the Italian rider. “But now the situation is similar to that of Honda: there is only one rider who is capable of exploiting all the potential and who makes a big difference compared to the other riders.
