Starting from the 10th and ninth place at the finish line of the Sprint Race, Fabio Quartararo was only partially satisfied at the end of Saturday’s day on the Misano circuit. Still struggling with his M1, the Frenchman did not hide his regret for not having been able to do more. Thinking back to the tests in preparation for the event, but above all aimed at improving the bike as a whole, El Diablo candidly admitted their limited usefulness at least in the immediate future.
“Here I was able to ride for a day and a half and I think it only helped me in the first practice session also because we have different chassis and setups. On that occasion we were able to try a new engine and also a new chassis which however proved to be worse than the current one. Overall I don’t think it helped performance, but only to improve in some sections of the track, like the third sector where in the first session on Friday I was the fastest as it is a point that requires precision and speed and I immediately found the rhythm”, he explained.
What doesn’t work remains clear. “We don’t have traction on the rear, so the rear slides a lot and today it prevented me from riding with my style. I was behind Miller and he was able to pull away with more grip and power. My pace was good anyway. I’m happy I didn’t make any mistakes and that I pushed hard. It’s frustrating to see that the others made mistakes and finished ahead of me, but for now we did the best we could.”
According to the data, the Frenchman was more often the victim of falls on left-hand bends (six times, compared to one on the opposite side). “Maybe I prefer the right-hand ones and I push too much on the others,” he joked. Finally, answering those who asked him if Yamaha brought only one chassis to Simoncelli, he confirmed by specifying: “I’ve been riding with the Sprint bike since the second run of the first free practice. We started with the standard one and then we switched to the new one that works better.”
