The World Championship leader suffered greatly last Sunday in the Aragon Grand Prix race, where despite starting from the front row he was unable to defend himself against his rivals, cutting a handful of points from his immediate pursuers, Pecco Bagnaia and Joan Mir , both on the podium.
Quartararo , who finished 8th at the finish line, claimed at the end of the race that he had a defective tire, something that has happened too often this year. However, this Thursday he admitted that the team had put too much pressure on the tire and that he had not trained with other drivers in front, which penalized him on Sunday.
“In Aragón something ended up going wrong, we have analyzed everything and we are clear about it. It’s good to have a race coming immediately after what happened on Sunday. Last year we had some difficulties here, but this year we have a bike that I am very comfortable with and I hope to continue in that vein. We’ll see the weather, we don’t really know what’s going to happen over the weekend with the weather. I hope it stays sunny until Sunday”, said the Frenchman this Thursday at the official press conference prior to the San Marino Grand Prix .
They asked the leader of the World Cup what had been the result of the analysis of what happened on Sunday.
“It’s more a question of something that happened during the race. The temperature was very high and the tire pressure was also very high, and the two factors came together. My mistake was always riding alone for the whole weekend. In the race, with riders in front, the tire overheated, we lacked grip and were unable to stop the bike. We were able to clear it up and we will work so that it does not happen to us in the future”, he admitted.
The tires are being the protagonists this year, but MotoGP and Michelin announced a contract extension until 2026.
“We have talked about this in Aragón, from my point of view the tires have a good performance, better than in 2019, but it can happen that you get a strange tire during the weekend, what we talked about was the quality so that always be homogeneous, but the performance is very good”, concluded the boy from the Côte d’Azur.
(Click on the link or on the image to see the photos of Fabio Quartararo’s 2021 season in MotoGP)
