Fabio Quartararo disappointed with P8 finish in Silverstone, thought he’d “lose more” with long lap penalty for the race
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Fabio Quartararo
Fabio Quartararo was to serve a long lap penalty for the 2022 Monster Energy Grand Prix due to his antics in Assen last time around. The Yamaha rider came into direct contact with his rival Aleix Espargaro during the opening few laps of the Dutch GP. This sent the Aprilia rider down the pack into p15. He then went on to make an impressive comeback from p15 to p4 impressing many. Quartararo on the other hand crashed and retired from the race later. He also got a long lap penalty for the race in Silverstone.
In Sunday’s 20 lap race, Fabio Quartararo was second until he served his long lap penalty. Even though the French rider just lost 1.6 seconds serving the penalty, he went from second to fifth place. This further translated into a P8 as the rider wasn’t able to keep up and his rear tyre overheated while racing in the middle of the pack. Wrong tyre choice was one of the variables that led to Fabio Quartararo’s poor performance. Yamaha made a grave mistake and didn’t test out the hard tyre during practice due to which they had no data on it.
“I thought the long lap would have penalised me much more,” Fabio Quartararo on his long lap penalty for Silverstone
When asked if he was disappointed with his race he said, “Yes. Disappointed because I thought the long lap would have penalised me much more, and finally it was not so bad.
“But just the rear tyre was so bad and behind riders we cannot ride our bike. It’s just a nightmare. If it’s just one bike, it’s ok, but if there is more than one bike the rear tyre was so hot and it loses performances, then it goes down and then you are riding in a totally different way to the others. And for us to then overtake [on this bike] is a nightmare.”
“I think yes because our problem was not the distance [we lost taking the penalty] because at the end we lost 1.5s [in the penalty], but it was not bad,” Fabio Quartararo said when asked if he could have stayed out front without the long lap penalty.”
“But just if it was only one bike [ahead of me] and I lost 1.5s, then it was ok. But just when we are behind some riders, my rear tyre got super-hot and we don’t understand why… of course we understand why, because with the other machines [in front of us] and the heat [from them] the rear tyre goes way too hot and we lose performance and it drops” he said.
“With the hard it would have been better, but it’s always easy to talk after the race. We didn’t try the hard rear tyre, so we made the mistake of not trying the hard rear tyre. So, we made a mistake but that’s the problem. We didn’t try the hard tyre and this condition was super important to use this tyre,” he added.
The race was immensely tough on the Yamaha MotoGP rider. This race was his chance to extend the gap between him and direct title rival Aleix Espargaro who was injured . The Aprilia rider wasn’t at 100% which gave Fabio an opportunity to increase his lead massively. This didn’t happen as the French rider finished just ahead of the injured Aleix Espargaro. With both of them finishing in P8 and P9, the lead that Fabio had on Espargaro just increased by a single point to 22 points now.
What were your thoughts on the 2022 British Grand Prix?
Also read : Francesco Bagnaia dismisses claims of MotoGP being too hard to overtake in 2022
Also read : Why have Spain and Italy dominated MotoGP?
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Varad Joshi
(940 Articles Published)