Yamaha brought Fabio Quartararo to the MotoGP title in 2021, with the Frenchman fighting for the championship until the end last year. However, in 2023 the drop in competitiveness was evident and not a single victory was achieved.
Massimo Meregalli, team manager, explained to GPOne.com that the problems are not new: ‘We found ourselves in this situation suddenly, but for two or three years, if not four, we have been improving very little, the problems have always been the same. We won in 2021 because we started strong, while our rivals had new bikes to correct, but in the second half of the championship we had difficulties. The same happened last year, we took advantage of the fact that we knew our bike very well, but when our opponents found a base, we had nothing else’.
According to the Italian, the troubled start of the rivals in 2021 and 2022 allowed Yamaha to be in the fight, something that did not happen this year: ‘We were able to hide our limitations in the previous two years because the others had problems at the beginning, but this season everyone started strong, with competitive bikes, and we faced reality’.
