If there is someone worried on the grid that «someone» is Fabio Quartararo for sure. The season start was far from being ideal for Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP Team and the former world champion didn’t hide his preoccupation with the current state of his bike, even coming to say that, at this moment, the team is ‘further than ever’, compared to their opponents.
The rider seemed quite concerned at the end of the first GP of the season, even more after the sunday’s race, as he told quoted on Motorsport when asked if his Yamaha is at it’s worse level, with the french also going even further: ‘Compared to how the level is right now, I would say yes. We improved, so this is something difficult to say. But the level of our bike compared to the others, it’s true that we are further than ever’.
Still, Quartararo did notice some improvements but, at the current moment of the category, Yamaha is still far… even more than in 2023, he added: ‘We are further than last year. We have improved a little bit but they are even better and faster than last year’.
And this gap to others doesn’t mean only to Ducati, KTM and Aprilia, he assured, looking at the also in trouble, Honda: ‘So, the gap between all the European manufacturers and us is even bigger – even to Honda it felt that today we were missing something, and they are also struggling a lot. But I felt we were even worse on sunday’.