Quartararo expresses disappointment with Yamaha’s exhausted MotoGP progress

Unforeseen Struggles for Quartararo in the 2023 MotoGP Season

The current MotoGP world champion, Fabio Quartararo, has been facing unforeseen struggles in the opening rounds of the 2023 season. Despite Yamaha’s efforts to provide him with a better bike by introducing new development parts over the winter, it ended up making matters worse for Quartararo throughout testing.

As a result, he had to revert back to older settings on his bike after trying out numerous new things during pre-season testing. The frustration seemed evident when he said:

“In the first moments, it’s, of course, frustrating because during the preseason we tried an amount of things that I never tried before: chassis, engine,aerodynamics.”

To make matters worse for Quartararo and Yamaha Factory Racing team is their lack of power from last year which continues to haunt them this year too. This combined with an inefficient aerodynamic concept has made racing even more challenging.

Moving forward into Mugello’s triple-header starting this weekend though seems like a hope for improvement as they will stick to older settings giving him confidence knowing well how his bike performs.

“This is what I need and maybe it’s not the best but at least I know my bike and will have to adapt accordingly,”

Quartararo won at Mugello in 2021 and was second in 2022. He believes that despite their disadvantage on slow corners due to aerodynamics limitations; coming from fast corners may help reduce that disadvantage marginally as compared with previous circuits like Le Mans or Austin.

“When we start from slow corners,it’s something that is a weak point for us from aerodynamics and power in the low gears. But coming from a fast corner, I think the disadvantage of power is much less.”

It remains to be seen if Quartararo can overcome his current struggles at Mugello and close the gap on the championship lead.