As Alex Crivillé , the Seva champion, says, the races always last the same, three quarters of an hour, minute up, minute down, even if the circuit is longer or shorter and has more or fewer curves.
However, some of the tracks on the MotoGP World Championship calendar hide some peculiarities that make them unique, such as the Sachsenring, a kart track of just four kilometers with 13 corners, most of them (10) aimed at the left. That makes it such a unique setting that, as a matter of fact, only one driver has managed to win in it since 2013, Marc Márquez, now absent due to injury.
For Fabio Quartararo, leader of the World Championship, being the first to win on this track after 10 years is not any extra motivation, basically because the Honda rider will not be there. However, it is a challenge to achieve a good result on a track that he defines as exhausting.
“Sachsenring is a very short circuit and it is one of the longest, eternal races, because when you have completed 15 laps and you think you still have 15 more to go, and always turning left, it gives you the feeling that you have two hours on the bike. It’s the same for everyone, but on a mental level it’s hard and it takes a long time”, explained the Frenchman this Thursday in the preview of the German Grand Prix.
Quartararo reaches the tenth race of a calendar of twenty, leading the World Championship and after a second place in Italy and the victory in Montmeló.
“Mugello and Barcelona were two fantastic races, we had a great pace all weekend in Montmeló, and in Italy it was even better because I struggled a lot on the weekend and instead things went very well on Sunday in the race. Now two weekends in a row come again, on two circuits that I like, and I hope to have a good result too,” predicted the Yamaha rider.
The start of the season was not good for Fabio, who has nevertheless grown extraordinarily since the World Cup came to Europe.
“Basically in Austin I wasn’t at full throttle, not even at the beginning in Qatar and Argentina, I was more in complaint mode, in my head I always had the lack of top speed,” he explained.
“In Austin I decided to put that mentality aside because the bike was not going to change, we have basically the same package as last year, and that mental step forward has brought me closer to a position of being more focused, and that has allowed me to always be in top 5 since then, so I’m very satisfied,” he summed up his clear improvement.
What will not improve, on paper, is the Yamaha M1, since few innovations were brought by the engineers to the Barcelona test.
“They did not bring anything new to the test, in Barcelona I did the race with a new swingarm that we tested in the Jerez test (early May) and in the tests on Monday in Barcelona we compared the two. The conclusion is that the new one performs better, so I will use it until the end of the year”, settled the boy from the Côte d’Azur.
