Fabio Quartararo is gearing up for another season with Monster Energy Yamaha in MotoGP, and the Sepang shakedown on Friday and Saturday marked his first track days with the new YZR-M1. Despite being encouraged by the potential of the bike, he admitted that it is not yet fully explored, and he hasn’t felt significant improvements.
The Frenchman explained to the press that Yamaha must 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 really aggressive. We have the potential, but we are not using it. I think that with the electronics we are a little bit far away, not only on the development of the engine. We have to find the best electronics to this engine and use it on our bike’.
Regarding how useful the shakedown was, Quartararo answered: ‘Unfortunately we didn’t use them properly, but of course we made 80 laps, so it’s quite a lot. We’ve seen a little bit our way, which was confirmed at 100%. 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 has been positive. In the second day we’ve struggled a little bit more because we had some difficulties in some pieces of the bike. But I think we’ve already made some great tests during these two days’.
The 2021 world champion then said: ‘At the moment I don’t really feel better. I feel the potential is there. We didn’t made a time attack. Of course with the new tyre we’ve pushed at our 100% and from lap 22 in the day 1 I was in 1m58.5s. So it’s already quite fast. Now we have to step up in the time attack during these three days, I think it’s already on the plan, to be better’.
Asked if the qualifying is the most important area, Quartararo replied: ‘I think the most important is to be already in the top 10 in Friday’s afternoon. I think 70% of the job is done. Then of course I think we have to find a solution for qualifying. On my riding style and on the bike, I think it’s not only on one side. I think we will find it’.