MotoGP: Fabio Quartararo Fed Up With Switching Yamaha Bikes Every Weekend

Saajan Jogia | Aug 9, 2024

Apr 14, 2023; Austin, TX, USA; Fabio Quartararo (20) of France and Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP Team rounds turn 11 during the MotoGP second free practice at Circuit of the Americas. Mandatory Credit: Dustin Safranek-USA TODAY Sports / Dustin Safranek-USA TODAY Sports

Fabio Quartararo has voiced his frustration with Yamaha's constant testing of different bikes every race weekend, making it challenging for him to establish a consistent base bike. The French rider feels more like a test rider than a racer, given the variety of bikes he's been tasked with evaluating.

Yamaha is strategically testing new components during Grand Prix weekends, following initial trials in private sessions, leveraging MotoGP's new concession system. By maximizing every development opportunity on the M1 MotoGP bike, Yamaha is determined to ride its way out of the current performance slump and regain competitiveness.

Quartararo explained the challenges he faced during qualifying, admitting that he felt "lost" due to the lack of a consistent "base" setup. This absence made it difficult for him to compare his runs on different bikes. He told the media:

“Just before the sprint we were trying way too many things, [going from] one bike to another and I was going to qualifying without any reference.

“With one bike I had to ride in one way, with the other one in another way. So I was completely lost.

“We are already struggling much more than usual, but I was really lost.

“I said I want to have a base that I know more or less and in the sprint it was much better. Still not very good but at least we finished not super far from Jack [Miller].”

Quartararo further expressed that the constant experimentation with different bikes often leads to unexpected changes, overwhelming him with analysis rather than allowing him to focus on pure speed. This exhaustive process has left him feeling more like a test rider than a competitive racer. He added:

“It's too much but you know sometimes you expect things to be better and not to be worse.

“Or say sometimes we have new items and we expect them to be much better.

“Sometimes the one that you expect the most [from] is the one that doesn’t really bring some positives.

“Right now, I think I was more like a test rider than [a race] rider during the last races.

“At the moment I prefer to also focus a little bit more on trying to be as fast as possible because it has been a long time that I'm not using the same bike for two days in a row.”

The 25-year-old Yamaha rider added that having two bikes makes the situation more complicated, unlike last year, when only one bike was available, which made it possible to judge its limits. He stated:

“It's not too many new items, it's too many different bikes in every single run.

“I do four laps, change of bike, [another] four laps, change of bike.

“[We do] time attack, but with which bike? So it's complicated.

“Two years ago we had the same bike [all year]. Even last year at the end of the season we knew the bike was not the same, but we kept our base and it's me putting the bike to the extreme limit.

“Right now, we can't really do it because I have no idea where the limit of the bike is.”