Fabio Quartararo looks back on the 2022 MotoGP season. The French champion never fails to point his finger once again at Yamaha.
The winter of Fabio Quartararo proceeds between training and moments of relaxation, after a nerve-wracking season in the MotoGP World Championship. Up until the Sachsenring race, the Yamaha rider seemed to be the big favorite to reconfirm the world championship, then he could do nothing against the unstoppable comeback by Pecco Bagnaia and the Ducati, capable of recovering 91 points in the standings and finishing at the top +17 over the Frenchman.
The Yamaha champion found himself fighting alone against eight Ducatis, because neither his teammate, Franco Morbidelli, nor were the RNF satellite team riders able to be competitive with the YZR-M1. “So I had no references, except myself. I had to assume the bike’s limit was what I had reached“, the 23-year-old admitted to Speedweek.com. Everything seemed to go smoothly in the first part of the championship, but something didn’t work from Assen onwards.
Fabio Quartararo with no escape against the Ducatis
Putting aside the disappointing evolution of the bike achieved by the Iwata top management last winter, which risked canceling the contract renewal, Fabio Quartararo has collected three victories and five podiums. But the incident in Holland was followed by others, up to the revealing stage at Misano, when he understood that it would be difficult to keep up with the Desmosedici GP of Bagnaia. “Last year I managed to catch up with Pecco and finish right behind him. This year I finished fifth, five seconds behind, after a race in which I gave everything. And that was very frustrating for me because I gave 100% and we were so far behind“.
The lack of maximum speed of the Yamaha M1 on the straights it forced the transalpine rider to chase the Ducatis, often without any hope of keeping up. This had a significant impact on his performance and morale: “I got on the bike with much less enthusiasm than in previous years“. Not only lack of power, but the Japanese prototype was also missing one of its traditional strengths: agility when changing direction and fluidity when cornering. “We had a better chassis than the others, but that wasn’t the case this year“.
The lack of performance over the flying lap conditioned his World Championship. In 2021 he started 14 times in the front row allowing him to confirm himself MotoGP world champion. In 2022 he only managed to start from the front row five times, with only one pole position. “When you look at how much other lap times have improved since 2019 compared to our performance, it’s frustrating. The others have improved a lot, we are at 2019 levels or worse“.
