Quartararo looks to Yamaha, 'struggling way too much with the bike'
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Fabio Quartararo is looking to Yamaha to fix a multitude of performance issues encountered in Sunday’s Styrian MotoGP, after his MotoGP title lead was slashed to just three points.Check out the MotoGP YouTube channel – CLICK HEREWinner of the season-opening Jerez races, the Petronas rider hasn’t been on the podium since, his results declining to seventh, eighth and now 13th place.”Really not positive. We need to understand what happened because actually we saw all the weak points that we have on the bike. It felt so strange because honestly, I thought that the potential was higher,” said the Frenchman.Holding tenth place when the initial race was stopped, Quartararo was 13th at the end of lap one of the restart, where he would finish – in between Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro and countryman Johann Zarco, riding with a recently fractured bone in his right wrist.”I was behind Aleix all the race, and I can see that the bike was struggling in many areas that I was not expecting. So apart from the problems from the brakes, we had many other problems,” Quartararo explained. “Number one is the top speed.”We need to find the solution to this because this will be a problem at Barcelona, Aragon and Valencia, where there are a lot of straights.”The four Yamaha riders were ranked in the bottom five for speed over the Styrian weekend.While Quartararo didn’t want to reveal all of the information he had passed on to Yamaha, braking was also clearly an issue.The #20 had changed his brakes for the restart one week earlier but still struggled with overheating, while a switch to a newer spec Brembo system for the second weekend was far from a perfect cure.”During the race, it was at the maximum. The lever was coming every time more soft. So it was arriving to [the point] that was going to have no brakes. So really dangerous, and no confidence,” he said.Sunday’s first race was stopped when factory Yamaha’s Maverick Vinales, who had remained on the standard Brembo system, jumped from his bike after brake failure into Turn 1 on lap 17.While the incident dropped Vinales to fifth in the standings, Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso is now just three points behind Quartararo.”4″Of course we are a title contender, but I don’t feel as confident as Jerez, because in Jerez everything was okay. Everything was going so well. But it looks like every time we have more problems and we have to study,” Quartararo said.”This was a really tough track for us, but last year I had a really nice feeling. I finished third. It was so different to the feeling from last year.”It’s not only me. Okay, Valentino [ninth place and top Yamaha] made a way better start than me, but everybody [on a Yamaha] is struggling. So it’s not easy to be in this kind of situation.”5″Let’s see what’s happens for the next races. We are struggling way too much with the bike during these three weeks. It’s impossible to fight for a championship with this kind of problem and really irregular races.”Misano will be a better track for us, but Yamaha needs to work a lot to fix the problem and to fix what we asked them to do for the next race.”As well as a return to a tighter, twisty, (and newly resurfaced) circuit, another external factor that could favour Yamaha next time out at Misano is a return to the standard 2020 spec rear tyre construction.”6″Yes. I’m really happy because I felt not so great with the casing that we had here in Austria. We will be back to a normal casing in Misano,” Quartararo confirmed.”So this is also something extra for us that will feel better, and also a better track. I think with the combination of things that will help us and hope a positive answer also from Yamaha to have an even more positive Misano GP.”Meanwhile, although the 21-year-old has been getting more and more accustomed to using Yamaha’s new holeshot/ride height system when on track, he said it wasn’t a factor in his braking woes.”7″I was using it already in the last race, but this has zero effect about the [front] brakes, because it’s only a matter of one button,” he said. “I think it’s totally different. Nothing to compare with the front brakes.”
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