The championship leader admitted on Saturday that he felt he didn’t have enough pace to fight for the podium despite finishing third in qualifying, but was more confident after the warm-up on Sunday morning.
But from the start Quartararo fell behind in the 23-lap race in Aragon and was only able to retreat to eighth place just ahead of Jorge Martin von Pramac.
With the victory of Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia, Quartararo’s lead was reduced from 65 to 53 points.
“After the warm-up, I expected that I would fight for the podium because I felt like I had something really good, I felt great with old tires and with 26 laps on the tire I was able to cope great”, said Quartararo.
“So right from the start of the race, my rear wasn’t working as usual.
“So, I went down, down, down [the order]. The only positive thing about the day is that I’m fighting for my position, I fought, I didn’t give up, even when it came to seventh, eighth, ninth place. I fought to the end, so that’s a positive thing. “
Despite scoring the championship lead, Quartararo said he “didn’t think it would be a disaster,” adding: “I felt like something was different. Something went wrong today.
“Last year 2019 everything was normal except for a fault on the front tire.
“But I don’t know what happened today that from the first lap it looked like my rear tire was off [not working properly].
“So we have to check carefully, I don’t want to blame anything, but to be honest it was a strange feeling on the first laps until the end of the race.”
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Quartararo says the tire problem meant he didn’t have the same grip as he had all weekend, nor the power or traction to stop, and the fact that Aragon is a “mess” for a Yamaha to overtake it on , only made his problems worse.
“I don’t want to say that it’s the tire, but I didn’t have the feeling I had today for the whole weekend, and right from the first lap I didn’t have the braking performance that I had, not the grip the traction.
“So something went wrong. And then overtaking on this track is quite a mess for us, because from Turn 15 to Turn 1 we lose three or four tenths, then I have to recover in the corners and cannot overtake.
“Well, it’s a little difficult.”
Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images