After building his title lead from 14 to 65 points over the last five races, which goes back to the incident with his leather in Barcelona, Fabio Quartararo’s world championship lead was reduced to 53 points by finishing eighth in Aragon.
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The Monster Yamaha rider confessed ahead of the weekend that the Spanish track was likely his worst of the season but still qualified on the front row and expected to fight for the podium.
Instead, he suffered from a “strange” lack of rear wheel grip early in the race and dropped back to tenth place by the middle distance before beating the Ducatis of rookies Enea Bastianini and Jorge Martin.
“I expected to fight for the podium after the warm-up because I felt great and had 26 laps on the tire [3 more than the race distance] I did a great job, “said Quartararo.
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“But from the start of the race I had the feeling that my rear tire wasn’t working as usual. I went down, down, down. The only positive thing about that day is that I was fighting for my position and not giving up. It just was for 7th, 8th and 9th, but I pulled it through to the end. “
Quartararo had suffered a similar, if more dramatic, drop in the Aragon race last year when his front tire pressures rose too high in the slipstream of other drivers.
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The Frenchman insisted that tire pressure hadn’t mattered this time around, and while he didn’t want to blame Michelin, it was clear that some form of tire performance issue – like those previously had title rivals Francesco Bagnaia and Joan Mir races – was at the top on his suspect list.
“Something went wrong today. Last year everything was normal except for the faults on the front tire [pressure]. I don’t know what happened today but from the first laps it looks like my rear tire … we need to do a thorough check and I don’t want to blame anything but it was a weird feeling of the race from the first laps to the end.
“I don’t want to say 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.” [previously], not the grip, not the traction.
“Overtaking on this track is also quite a mess for us, because from Turn 15 to Turn 1 we lose 3-4 tenths and I have to recover in the corners and then cannot overtake. It’s a little difficult. “
“We knew we would fight here, but we didn’t expect the race to be so tough from the start,” said team manager Massimo Meregalli. “We’re still analyzing what made Fabio uncomfortable today. We haven’t found the answer yet.
“Whatever caused it, it was a real shame because after the warm PP we were confident that we could have done a completely different race than what ultimately happened today. We will definitely get the data before the race analyze carefully next week. “
But all in all it could have been a lot worse than losing 12 points from his title lead to new closest rival and Sunday race winner Bagnaia.
“It’s not a disaster,” said Quartararo. “We are always expanding our lead at the Sachsenring. Also in Austria. At Silverstone we talk and say that there is a possibility that we will lose points [but didn’t].
“We started here with a 65 point lead. It’s been a long time since I lost points! It’s not a catastrophe, but we have to know what happened today.”
“But even when I was P9 I gave everything to fight for one point more and I think these kinds of races where you never give up are very good for the championship.”
Temporary team-mate Cal Crutchlow finished as the second best Yamaha in 16th place.