Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP’s Fabio Quartararo recovered from a slow start to finish eighth at the checkered flag. Team-mate Franco Morbidelli didn’t get the battle he wanted, but he finished in 14th place and scored points. Quartararo, who qualified 11th, lined up 10th on the grid following the withdrawal of E. Bastianini (Docati).
From here, he tried to make a better start than he had in the previous day’s sprint, but it didn’t go as planned, and by the end of the first lap he was back in 15th place. Even so, he made a hard recovery, and M.Oliveira (Aprilia) and M.Marquez (Honda) crashed out of the race. However, the gap with the car in front is large, and J. Martin (Docati) is closing in behind him, so he cannot let his guard down for even a moment. Quartararo continued to push and passed L.Marini (Ducati) at 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, he caught A. Espargaro (Aprilia) 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 up in the chaos at the first corner and temporarily fell back to the back of the line. From here, I tried hard to make a recovery, but I mightn’t get the feeling I wanted, and I mightn’t pick up the pace. Despite this, he battled with F. Di Gianantonio (Ducati) and A. Fernandez (Aprilia) to earn points. There were also several retirements in 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 ranking with 8 points. Morbidelli is 17th in the ranking with 2 points. Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP finished 8th in the team ranking with a total of 10 points. Yamaha finished 5th in the constructors’ ranking with a total of 8 points. Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP Fabio Quartararo (8th) “Of course it was a difficult 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’s I think the pace was really fast.Next time in Argentina, I will do my best to be more up front.”Franco Morbidelli (14th)“It was a very tough race. It was 0.6 seconds behind at the time, and 0.5 seconds behind today, so it is 0.1 seconds ahead, so it is necessary to pay attention to the good points. It was consistent and we managed to finish and score two points.Hopefully next time in Argentina we will find more good parts.I’m looking forward to it.” Massimo Melegari Team Director) “The opening round did not go as expected. Fabio[Quartararo]started late once more today and we need to fix this. It was a very good start, so the drop off at the start was a big hindrance to the development following that.In that sense, the recovery from 15th place in the early stages to 8th place proves the 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 here to Argentina. I will go forward with determination to make up for the missing parts.”
