Fabio Quartararo is preparing for another season with Monster Energy Yamaha in MotoGP and the Sepang shakedown on Friday and Saturday were his first days on track with the new YZR-M1. Despite being encouraged by the potential of the bike, he admitted that it is not yet being fully exploited and that he has not yet felt considerable improvements.
The Frenchman explained to the press that Yamaha needs to work on the electronics: ‘I’m sure it’s better, but I think we have to work a lot on the electronics to improve the character of the engine, because it’s still very aggressive. We have the potential, but we’re not using it. I think we’re a bit far behind with the electronics, not just in engine development. We have to find the best electronics for this engine and use it on our bike‘.
When asked about how useful the shakedown was, Quartararo replied: ‘Unfortunately, we didn’t use them properly, but of course we did 80 laps, so that’s a lot. We saw a bit of our way, which was confirmed 100 percent. The first day was basically to test new things that shouldn’t be better, but shouldn’t be worse, especially for the weight of the bike, it was positive. On the second day, we had some difficulties in some parts of the bike. But I think we’ve already had good tests during these two days‘.
The 2021 world champion then said: ‘Right now, I don’t feel really better. I feel that the potential is there. We didn’t attack the stopwatch. Of course, with the new tire, we attacked 100 percent and from lap 22 on the first day, I was doing 1m58.5s. So, that’s already quite fast. Now we have to focus on attacking the stopwatch during these three days, I think it’s already in the plan, to be better‘.
Questionado sobre si la clasificación es lo más importante, Quartararo respondió: ‘Creo que lo más importante es estar entre los diez primeros el viernes por la tarde. Creo que el 70 por ciento del trabajo está hecho. Después, por supuesto, creo que tenemos que encontrar una solución para la clasificación. En mi estilo de pilotaje y en la moto, creo que no es solo de un lado. Creo que la encontraremos’.
