The frustration is great for Fabio Quartararo, qualified seventh on the grid for the Indonesian Grand Prix but was knocked out of points in the sprint race. Only 12th at the finish, the 2021 world champion paid the price for an attempted overtake on Franco Morbidelli, which ended in contact and a failure. An incident which highlights the recurring problem with his Yamaha, on which he simply feels unable to overtake.
“It happened that the only overtaking that I tried to do, since we couldn’t do any, went badly: we lost positions”he sums up bitterly. “We weren’t able to overtake and that’s clearly our biggest weakness in the race.”
“There is no way for us to overtake. I pushed as hard as possible, but we have less grip than them, less acceleration, more wheelies, more problems stopping the bike… We has no strong points compared to them, so we drive defensively in the race, so as not to be overtaken, but without being able to overtake in a fight either, we have been bad for several years.”
By going further in the description of the feeling, Fabio Quartararo simply believes that he has now found a situation identical to the one he experienced two years ago… except that the rest of the field obviously did not hang around along the way.
“I felt like it was 2022, except that the others are clearly much better than before”he laments. “In 2022, there weren’t many bikes that could perform as well, the KTMs weren’t as fast, even the Aprilias weren’t often… But now, it’s too complicated to do a good result when you can’t overtake.”
“During the race we lost a place at the start, we managed to stay in 7th position, but arriving on Pedro [Acosta]I felt that I had something more, clearly, but we are stuck behind and we cannot overtake. Except that the others who arrive behind can do it. We yo-yo too much with those in front. It’s quite complicated.”
No improvement in the short term
Fabio Quartararo feels impuissant.
Photo de: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
The equation to be solved thus always remains the same, namely finding “the same power as at the start of the season, but with agility”. Faced with Jorge Martín’s comeback at the end of the sprint race, Fabio Quartararo could only measure the gulf that still separates his machine from the best: “Martín overtook me in the last laps, I clearly saw that we were still light years behind their bike.”
Despite the intensive development to which Yamaha is subject, the scale of the work remains immense, and without encouraging prospects in the very short term. “For this year I don’t think it’s possible”decides the Niçois. “We will normally have a new engine at the end of the season, but it will not be an engine that will have much more power. What would be really important is that we have more grip to find a little trick in more.”
Asked about his objective for the Grand Prix on Sunday, Fabio Quartararo concluded with pessimism: “In terms of pace I think we can finish in the top 6 or top 7, but it will totally depend on the first lap, and how long we will take to warm up the tire, because we are in difficulty with that. In terms of pace we know what we can do, but we can’t do it in the long term.”
