Quartararo: “On paper, we have the speed to fight for victory everywhere”

Between MotorLand Aragon and Yamaha, the relationship has always been complicated. Since the introduction of the Alcañiz track to the calendar in 2010, the Japanese manufacturer has totaled three victories, compared to seven for Honda. But when it comes to podiums, Yamaha has 11, two fewer than its rival factory.

Since his arrival in MotoGP in 2019, fabio quartararo has never done better than fifth at MotorLand. However, today, the world champion won the second fastest time on Friday. This bodes well for the rest of the weekend, even if he prefers to be cautious. “We can be fast, but the problem is not to be fast, we have to be fast in the race and therefore to be able to overtake, and that is our problem,” declared the Frenchman. This is what we lack, because we have speed. On paper we have the speed to fight for victory everywhere, but then that is not the case. (…) Obviously, you have to start from the first line to hope to fight for something. »

Thursday, at a press conference, the world champion confided that he had put his finger on what went wrong during previous editions. Have he and his team finally found a way to manage front tire pressure during the race? “We work a lot to have the tire pressure under control,” he replied. Every year, this is the problem and we hope to be able to do something much better than in previous years. »

A promising new chassis?

During the two days of testing at Misano, Quartararo evaluated a new chassis which, even if it is not a revolution, he really liked. So he wanted to try it today. “The chassis is very similar to the old one,” he said. I wanted to test it, because we know how each other behaves, and it wasn't too bad, because I finished second after making a mistake. I think we will keep the new one. We still have to talk about it, there was nothing negative or positive here. On this circuit, we won't feel anything, we'll look at the data, but whether I use it or not, it's nothing at all. It might be a little bit better or a little bit worse. »