Max Bartolini recently spoke in an interview for GPOne about the current state of Yamaha in MotoGP and some of the reasons why the Japanese manufacturer has fallen behind European manufacturers in recent seasons.
Bartolini talks about Quartararo as a key piece for Yamaha, but also highlights the daily effort of the Japanese manufacturer’s responsible to improve the bike and reach the level of their European rivals, namely Ducati.
– I had an idea. The bike itself doesn’t perform badly, in my opinion, when MotoGP evolved in certain aspects, they (Yamaha’s responsible) underestimated its impact. Also, in 2021, the last year they won the title, Fabio was there to make the difference. All of this led them to fall a bit behind. In modern MotoGP, if we can achieve 7 or 8 tenths, we have a big difference, but in reality, we are losing two or three things. Like aerodynamics, the bottom part of the fairing, just those aspects that they underestimated.
He also added, comparing Ducati with Yamaha: ‘After three or four years, you can’t invent something overnight. You can’t make another Ducati. Assuming you could make a Ducati, it wouldn’t be possible anyway. So, we have to understand what we have and then improve it.’
