Fabio Quartararo was battling for a top ten spot in the MotoGP Indonesian GP Sprint when, on the seventh lap, he attempted an overtake on Franco Morbidelli (Prima Pramac/Ducati) that cost him several positions. He ended up finishing 12th, without any points, after starting from sixth.
The French rider from Monster Energy Yamaha admitted that he tried to overtake in the only way possible with a bike that forces him to defend without being able to attack:
– It’s the only way for us to overtake, and it was completely wrong. I pushed to the maximum. Basically we have less grip than them, less acceleration, more wheelie, more problems to stop the bike. We don’t have any stronger point than them, so we are riding in a defensive way during the race to don’t get overtaken, and also we cannot try an overtake.
And Quartararo stressed that these issues aren’t new: ‘It’s been many years that we are quite bad in Yamaha, but especially now that I start to have the base, I was not able to even make an overtake. So it’s the point where we have to get strong quite fast’.
The situation has left the #20 rider feeling frustrated, as he admitted: ‘It’s frustrating, because it’s always the same issue about not being possible to overtake. In 2022, it was really similar, but in 2022 the other brands were not that strong, so I could fight more at the front. But now basically if you are behind you are stuck, and you can’t do anything’.