Fabio Quartararo had a completely forgettable first day of work, and proof of that is the 14th place time he recorded in Practice, which means he will have to go through Q1 tomorrow, but worse was the bike’s performance – in braking and once again the lack of grip – which brought the Yamaha… back to ‘reality’.
How was the day, the press asked the Frenchman, and he began by answering: ‘It was unfortunately a return to reality. We struggled, the track is affecting the performance of our bike too much and that’s not normal. The grip is high on the track and we’re not too bad, but when the grip is bad we’re clearly a long way off, one second off pole position, but basically one second off the three manufacturers who are leading. It was a very difficult day’.
He went on to explain how the bike is behaving: ‘Everywhere, on the rear grip. It seems that with straight braking… I have good braking ability but it seems that the bike only does it with the front. You can see with the Ducati or Aprilia that they brake with both wheels and lean quickly under braking and we’re lacking braking performance, so… The rear grip from 40 degrees to the maximum lean angle is zero’.
Quartararo then explained that he gets the feeling that the M1 has almost only one wheel on the ground: ‘We’re basically riding with only one wheel because when you have to lean quickly the rear has no contact and that’s something we have a lot of trouble with, especially when there’s no grip’.