Álex Márquez's crash sent shivers down Fabio Quartararo's spine: "It doesn't make you want to get back to racing."

fabio quartararo experienced a paradoxical Sunday in Barcelona. Starting at a blistering pace, the Yamaha rider initially plummeted to the depths of the standings before climbing back up to 5th place at the end, his best result of the season, at the end of a race disrupted by incidents, interruptions and penalties.

On paper, the results are positive, but the Frenchman is finding it hard to be happy about it: "I got off to a good start, but the race was rather predictable." he summarizes, while he had anticipated that the lack of grip of his Yamaha on a low-grip track like Barcelona would handicap him.

After the first interruption, the track had already changed, given the rubber deposited by the motorcycles during 12 laps: "Automatically, in the third race" (The 12 rounds that followed the second restart. Editor's note) My grip was much better." explains Quartararo. Yet, even with better grip, he was never really able to express himself. Stuck behind Marco Bezzecchi, he reached the finish in 7th position, before benefiting from Ai Ogura's penalty for his collision with Pedro Acosta, and from Joan Mir's penalty for not respecting tire pressure, to climb to 5th place.

A difficult race for Fabio Quartararo

The hardest part for the Frenchman may not have been the race itself, but everything surrounding it. The second start, in particular, was especially trying after Álex Márquez's major crash. “I wasn’t really watching TV when it happened. I try to avoid watching, but when you go through turn 10 and you see Álex on the ground like that, you don’t really feel like restarting the race.”, he confides. I got chills seeing all that, the parts, the flying tires, the motorcycle. It wasn't easy.

Despite finishing fifth, Quartararo achieved his best result of the year and leaves with an encouraging result in terms of points. The next race of the year, at Mugello, is unlikely to help him overcome the weaknesses of the M1 V4. Renowned for its long straight of nearly a kilometer, the Italian circuit should clearly expose the gap between the Iwata machines and their rivals in terms of top speed.

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