Fabio Quartararo Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP recovered from a slow start to finish eighth at the checkered flag. His teammate Franco Morbidelli didn’t get the fight he wanted, but he finished in 14th place and scored points. Quartararo, who qualified 11th, finished 10th on the grid after E. Bastianini (Docati) withdrew.
From here, he tried to make a better start than he had in the sprint the day before, but it didn’t go as planned, and by the end of the first lap he was back in 15th place. Nevertheless, he recovered hard, and M.Oliveira (Aprilia) and M.Marquez (Honda) came out of the race. However, the gap with the car in front of him is big, and J. Martin (Docati) is closing in behind him, so he can’t let his guard down even for a second. Quartararo continued to push and passed L.Marini (Ducati) on the second corner with six laps to go. In addition, Martin crashed, and with 5 laps remaining, the possibility of joining the battle for 4th place appeared. With two laps to go, A. Espargaro (Aprilia) caught and moved up to 8th. The difference with the top was 8.543 seconds. On the other hand, Morbidelli, who started from 16th on the grid, was caught in the chaos in the first corner and temporarily fell back to the back of the line. From here, I tried hard to recover, but I couldn’t get the feeling I wanted, and I couldn’t pick up the pace. Despite this, he fought against F. Di Gianantonio (Ducati) and A. Fernandez (Aprilia) to gain points. There were also several retirements at the front, and in the end, he moved up to 14th and took the checkered flag. The difference with the top is 27.050 seconds. As a result, Quartararo finished 10th in the standings with 8 points. Morbidelli is 17th in the standings with 2 points. Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP finished 8th in the team standings with a total of 10 points. Yamaha finished 5th in the constructors’ standings with a total of 8 points. Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP Fabio Quartararo (8th) “Of course it was a tough race. The pace itself wasn’t too bad, and if you look at the last lap, I’m pretty close to my own fastest lap last year , so this time everyone I think the pace is very fast. Next time in Argentina, I will do my best to be more forward.” Franco Morbidelli (14th) “It was a very hard race. She was 0.6 seconds behind at the time, and 0.5 seconds behind today, so she is 0.1 seconds ahead, so we need to pay attention to the good points. He was consistent and we managed to finish and score two points. Hopefully next time in Argentina we will discover more good parts. I’m looking forward to it.” Team Director Massimo Melegari) “The opening round didn’t go as expected. Fabio started[Quartararo]late again today and this needs to be fixed. It was a very good start, so the reduction at the beginning was a big obstacle to the development after that. In that sense, the recovery from 15th place in the early stage to 8th place proves’ r high potential. On the other hand, he didn’t get the evolution he wanted, now we have to analyze the data and try to get more out of the car’s potential next time. We will go straight from the here to Argentina and I will go forward determined to make up for the missing pieces.”
