Despite the points hemorrhage (61) he has suffered in the last four rounds over Pecco Bagnaia, the Frenchman still holds a 30-point lead over the Italian, a margin of more than a grand prix than gives you a wild card.
Fabio Quartararo will appear this Sunday at Motorland with the intention of stopping that bleeding of points, but being aware that the scenario is not the most conducive for that to happen.
More than the circuit, the area that his motorcycle crosses is no longer the fourth sector in particular, but the back straight , downhill, which precedes the last corner. There, the current champion loses lap after lap an average of four tenths, a too important ballast when one faces the Ducati.
Quartararo, who tested the propeller that Yamaha has designed for the 2023 prototype ten days ago at the Misano test, joked then with the possibility of incorporating it immediately into his current M1, given the power gain offered by the new engine. At Motorland, that new power unit would have come in handy, as it would most likely have allowed him to win a grid line.
“There is no legal plan to neutralize the last sector. We know where we lose those almost four tenths, which, in the total of 23 laps, is a long time. We have been able to see in the video that we use to analyze the driving, and in the last corner I don’t waste time”, summarized Quartararo, as resigned by the lack of punch of his M1 on the straight, as satisfied by his performance on a personal level.
“I’m very happy with my pace; I think it’s [good enough] to fight for the victory. But it’s the same as always: I can already have a pace three tenths faster than the others, that in the race I’ll be behind The timing is super important and sixth place was the best possible result”, added the rider from Nice, who, yes, did not deny the anger caused by that shortage of horses.
“When you see that you reach the last sector with the absolute best time, and that right after you cross the finish line and you’re sixth, then you can already be proud of yourself, that inside my head I can only think of tacos. What happens I’m just getting used to it”, deepened the Devil.
The Yamaha rider was at his maximum every time he got on his bike, especially in the final qualifying round (Q2), in which he was about to crash as soon as he put on the last set of new tyres. “The only thing that could blame me is that I made a mistake in the second corner and I had a scare that led me to have to make a good lap on the second attempt. But, in any case, I would not have improved half a second either,” Quartararo clinched.
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