With the aim of innovating in aerodynamic terms, Yamaha found potential support in the idea of bringing a new fairing to the Italian event. However, his debut in the M1 did not leave Fabio Quartararo very satisfied, who, without thinking too much, decided to return to the series bike, with which Aleix Espargaró managed to finish ahead last Sunday.
“Obviously when we have new things we expect it to be better. Since the beginning of the season I have been hoping that a new fairing will bring more top speed,” said the Frenchman after the test.
“It was actually a little bit better at top speed, but you have to weigh the positives and negatives, and that fairing had a lot more negatives than positives.”
“From the outside it seems that if there are only two fewer wings it changes little, but in reality the bike is completely different.”
In this way, in an attempt to increase the maximum speed of the bike, the new fairing did nothing more than “annoy” the Frenchman throughout the weekend. As a result, Fabio requested a return to standard aerodynamics for the race.
“It’s actually weird because before I got here the biggest problem was top speed,” he said on the MotoGP championship website. “On Friday and Saturday I didn’t complain at all about the top speed because there were much bigger problems than that.
“We were smart to say ‘ok, that’s fine because we’re 1km/h faster but we have to go back to the old one because we lose too much in other areas’. So I think it was a good decision to go back to something safe. It’s obviously disappointing [for the team], but we knew the old fairing worked fine.
“On Saturday I felt really bad with the bike, I didn’t have the confidence to do even one lap, so we went back to the stock bike. We lose some speed, but I think the most important thing for me as a rider is to feel the front end. If I feel good I can really go fast,” said the reigning championship leader.
“I wasn’t feeling well but we thought such a small difference in the fairing wasn’t a problem and we decided to go back to our standard bike. We lost a bit of top speed but when you have slipstream in front of you it’s not too bad. Last year I was driving super fast, our pace was good, but not this year.”
“So I decided to go to the standard bike and I’m super happy to finish in this position and to have fought to overtake the Ducatis. It was great to stay in this second position and get these precious 20 points,” concluded the French rider.
