Another MotoGP season is about to begin, and despite the concessions and the many internal changes, Fabio Quartararo doubts that Monster Energy Yamaha is already at the desired level.
The 2021 world champion said in a press conference that there has been progress, but the intended positions are far away: ‘Especially I think we’ve made steps in terms of how we are working. The mentality inside the team is completely different. I think we’ve made a step, but everybody made a step, so this is a little bit why we are struggling right now. But I think we just need much more time. I think the new engineers are doing a really great job. I think right now we are still far away; I don’t think we are in a position to really fight in the positions we want. But we will just give our best from the start until the end’.
According to Quartararo, despite the race pace being better than the qualifying pace, there is much more to improve on the YZR-M1: ‘Well, there are many areas where we have to improve. But also last year the pace was always much better than one lap. We know how important is to be in the Q2 from Friday afternoon. There are some areas like the electronics, going into the corner… the way we are using the rear tyre going in is something that we are a little bit worse every year and focusing too much in some areas. So we have to get back like in 2019 or 2021 – the way we were riding was much smoother. I think we need much more time to understand completely what we need’.