In an exclusive interview with Motorsport.com at the beginning of June, the 2021 world champion and current first place overall in the championship, Frenchman Fabio Quartararo, assured that the problems caused by the Yamaha had blocked him, but that He had decided to change his mentality, stop talking about the bike to focus on riding, which put him, once again, in the lead of the championship.
“At the beginning of the World Championship, I wasn’t mentally focused. I saw that Yamaha hadn’t evolved,” explained the Frenchman in that interview. “The anger took hold in my head and it blocked me. I was a bit trapped,” he added.
The French driver admitted that after the race in Austin, in which he finished 7th, he made a decision: “Stop talking about top speed and concentrate on what you have to do, on going as fast as possible”.
Since then, Fabio stopped criticizing the Yamaha’s lack of evolution and focused on winning, adding wins at Portimao , Barcelona and Sachsenring to become the solid championship leader.
This Sunday at Silverstone, doubts returned to the mind of the Frenchman, who not only saw how he finished eighth, something that had not happened to him since the first races of the course: Qatar (9th) and Argentina (8th), his worst results so far, and thoughts about the performance of the M1 returned.
“I am disappointed because I thought that the long lap (sanction) would penalize me more (he only lost one second of time and three positions). So the problem was not that, it is that with our bike I cannot lap behind other bikes, because I have to drive in a different way and overtaking becomes a nightmare,” he said.
Quartararo admitted that Yamaha made a mistake in the choice of tires, by not mounting the rear hard compound, despite the rise in temperature that so advised, not having tested it during the weekend’s tests.
“It was a mistake not to test the rear hard rubber during FP4. Riding behind other bikes, the rear tire got very hot and consumed more than expected”, with respect to the hard that the top five classified did ride.
The leader of the World Championship made a good start, placed second and remained there until the fourth lap, when he made the long lap and dropped to fifth position. Once in that scenario, Quartararo could not advance and was losing positions.
“I saw many things in the other bikes that ours lacks. Top speed, acceleration, traction…”, he lamented.
The lack of evolution of the Yamaha is endemic and, apparently, the improvements have not just arrived.
“I don’t know how they work in the factory, because I only see a few Japanese in the workshop. But this bike makes my life very difficult; nobody knows what I’m pushing,” he confessed.
Quartararo, who rules out Aleix Espargaró as a rival in the fight for the title, is concerned about the evolution of the Ducati and, especially, Pecco Bagnaia, who has fully engaged in the battle.
“In two races I have lost almost two grand prix ahead of Pecco. But it is normal because there are many Ducati on the grid,” settled the boy from Nice.
