The Frenchman qualified on pole for the 23-lap race in Mugello and fought off early resistance from Pramacs Johann Zarco, who became dominant for leader Francesco Bagnaia to his third win of the year after falling on the second lap.
It did so despite the significant top speed penalty that Yamaha will bring in 2021, but marks the second track this year – including Qatar – marked by a long straight and expected to be a Ducati stronghold on which Yamaha has triumphed.
A major update for Yamaha at Mugello was the introduction of its front holeshot device, which caused Quartararo – who now leads the championship with 24 points – to lose just one position at the start of the race last Sunday.
When asked by Motorsport.com if Yamaha now has a full package, he said, “Yes, I think we have a full package.
“I think OK, the top speed isn’t the best, but we actually won on two tracks [suited to] Ducatis.
“Everyone said the Ducati [would be dominant] in Qatar the Ducati [would be dominant] Here. But actually nobody expected to have a Yamaha, a KTM and a Suzuki on the podium today.
“I think what we missed was the front [start] Device because our starts were terrible and we have improved a lot.
“So I think that the top speed is not so important for a lap and I think that for the race I have taken the confidence that we can do without top speed without top speed.
“But our bike runs extremely well, I have a really good feeling up front. And in the end there aren’t many tracks with a long straight, so we’ll see in Barcelona that I was really good there too.”
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Team-mate Maverick Vinales experienced a tough race from 13th on the grid after a controversial qualifying.
Vinales recovered to eighth place in the race and blamed his choice of the medium-sized front tire for his problems.
“I really thought the result would be very different because it’s a track that I like, a track that I feel good on,” said Vinales.
“Somehow I lost the feeling after FP1. The only thing I changed from FP1 to FP2 is the front tire, I just went to medium and then the problems started.
“Well, I don’t know why we didn’t try the soft front again. I think we didn’t pay enough attention to it because in FP1 the first touch was fantastic, I got 1: 47.1s in just six minutes made.” Round.
“Well, basically it looks like I’ve lost a lot of rotation. So we have to check that, we have to analyze.
“On the one hand it is difficult because I get a bad result, but on the other hand it is positive because we have data from FP1 to understand why.
“That’s the most important thing. We have the data that we need to analyze and we have a man on our team who wins.”