0.256s. That was all that separated Fabio Quartararo’s Qatar MotoGP race time during the 2021 Doha round and 2022 season-opener.
But while that pace had been enough to fight through the field and win one year ago, Yamaha’s reigning world champion was left in a ‘worried’ ninth place on Sunday.
A well-publicized lack of top speed was compounded by unexpected front tire pressure issues, also experienced by team-mate Franco Morbidelli (11th) and RNF Yamaha’s Andrea Dovizioso (14th).
The end result was that Quartararo crossed the finish line 10.5s from race winner Enea Bastianini and behind at least one bike from all five of Yamaha’s MotoGP rivals.
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“Knowing that last year [Yamaha] won both races, and now we finish basically behind, quite far back, of course I’m worried,” Quartararo said. “We made a fourth row start, going through Qualifying 1, so I would say I cannot be super confident [for the season ahead].
“But as I always say, I’m not an engineer. My job is to be 100% prepared and focused for every race and I give my 100% in every condition, whether I’m fighting for victory, P5, P9, P15 .
“I will give my best whatever the position.”
Quartararo climbed from eleventh to eighth place on the opening lap, slipped back to tenth, returned to eighth when Francesco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin crashed out, then lost a place to countryman Johann Zarco on the final lap.
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“I made a great start and then from second lap we already had tire pressure that goes super high,” Quartararo said. “Basically, it’s a bit strange that it was already from the second lap and then we just dropped.
“The team calculate, let’s say, that when you are in the slipstream the tires will go up from these numbers. But from the second lap, we were already much higher than expected until Pecco and Martin crashed in front of me.
“I was still not really in the slipstream. I think I was close to one-second behind, but my front tire was a disaster, not the tire itself but the pressure was too high and we need to understand why.”
Quartararo said he wasn’t surprised to see a Ducati, Honda and KTM on the podium because, “They made an amazing job. I think it’s predictable because they made a great job during the winter and I think it’s just the result of the hard work.”
And how much of a factor will the current performance issues with the M1 be in terms of Quartararo’s contract negotiations with Yamaha for 2023?
“My priority is to win. Nothing more. So my priority is to be sure to have the best bike, so of course and for the future it’s really important and it’s the most important thing,” he said.
Quartararo was ranked joint 20th on the top speed chart with Dovizioso during the race. Both reached a peak of 348.3km/h compared to a best of 357.6 by Joan Mir’s Suzuki.