Quartararo: "I didn't start the year concentrated; the lack of evolution of the Yamaha blocked me"

June 9, 2022

El Diablo , which last season served Yamaha its first MotoGP crown since 2015 (Jorge Lorenzo), ended the year by entrusting the engineers of the Iwata manufacturer to remedy the lack of power in the M1, an evil that has already it seems endemic in the Japanese prototype. His pleas, however, did not have the desired effect for the Nice broker, who spent the winter tests complaining about the lack of efficiency of the tuning fork brand’s technical division, which took a year and a half to revitalize the propellant, so that the new one offered a performance practically traced to the previous one.

The contrast is tremendous between that crestfallen Quartararo and the one who will arrive at the Sachsenring next week, an event that will mark the halfway point of the World Cup, as the outstanding leader of the general table and after chaining four podiums in the last five grand prix, with two wins included. , in addition to having the renewal in your pocket. That inertia has nothing to do with the one at the beginning of the course, in which he only touched the drawer in one of the first four races.

There are those who could try to convince the staff that the reason for the change in trend lies in the mechanics, but Quartararo prefers to assume his share of the responsibility, and acknowledges that this stagnation of the bike, in terms of speed, threw him off center and more than account, to the point of not being able to offer their best version.

“From February until now nothing has changed. What changed is that, at the beginning of this World Championship, I was not mentally focused. I saw that Yamaha had not evolved, the anger took hold in my head and it blocked me. I was a bit trapped, because in 18 months of evolution, the bike hasn’t gained a single kilometer per rush hour. I had a bad time because, in a year, I went from overtaking Alex Rins on the straight to seeing how he ripped off my stickers”, affirmed the current champion , in a chat with Motorsport.com that took place a few days ago in Montmeló.

“In Qatar and Argentina I could have done much better, but after Austin I accepted what was there, that the bike ran less and that it hadn’t improved, but I decided to get the best possible result with what I had”, explained the #20, before expanding a little more on that recovery process: “In Austin I finished seventh, fighting with Marc, and that for me was already a good result. Then came the victory in Portimão . And I said to myself: “Stop talk about top speed and focus on what you have to do, on going as fast as possible, and then we’ll see how far we go”.

In the same way that Quartararo has no qualms about singing the ‘ mea culpa ‘ for that start lacking focus, he also does not have it to explain that the formula used for that change of chip comes from the work that he carried out in his day (2019). with a psychologist, although this time he applied those techniques on his own. “I made this change completely on my own. I worked with a psychologist a long time ago, and I learned a lot. I learned that there is no point in being angry about something that you will not be able to change. For my personal image it was worse, to work in the box, too, and even more so because anger does not help you achieve good results”, concluded who is the reference of the current championship.

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Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing