English
Italiano
Coming back from a weekend at Phillip Island that saw him finish the Sprint Race in eleventh and the Sunday race in ninth, Fabio Quartararo is looking forward to the challenge ahead of him in Thailand with a fair amount of confidence, albeit always with a good dose of realism due to the awareness of the limits of his Yamaha.
"I have very good memories of this track, so I think it will not be so bad for us, especially over one lap. Clearly, the goal is to be in Q2 from Friday afternoon and try to reach a good result. There's a different tire for us, but it's not a big difference. The others have less potential with this tyre, so I think this is going to be important. We know that we miss the grip and especially the acceleration and top speed in this track, I think we can manage and try to be fast."
Turning to the subject of the engine, the 2021 world champion revealed, "It's the one I like the most but also the slowest. Unfortunately we are missing a lot of areas, but we will have, I think, before the end of the season a new spec with more top speed, this will be super important because we are losing a lot in straight-line performance."
Looking ahead, there should be no major revolutions. "With the concessions we're never thinking about 2025, we always think to make the bike better and better. We changed four times the engine spec this year, four chassis and we will have another one before Valencia I think. We don't really have a '2025' bike, the one we are using now is just evolving step-by-step, so this is what I mean. The Valencia test will be very important, because we will have a few different things, but also the preseason test with four bikes. All this will be important for us to take a step forward," he explained.
On the head-to-head for the title, however, El Diablo is uncertain: "I have no idea what is happening up front, because Martin and Bagnaia's times are too far from ours. They are always in the top three, while we can aspire to the top five at most. They are both very strong and it is already the second championship in a row that they are fighting for the World Championship. Jorge has a 20-point lead, but there are still 111 points up for grabs, so it is impossible to make a prediction. I think, however, that this round will be very important."
On the Buriram weekend scenario, however, he said, "Ducati superior here as well? For sure they are fast, they have good grip and their anti-hopping system works very well, all aspects in which we are still lacking, but I expect KTM and Aprilia to be in good shape. We'll see."
More technical and pragmatic was teammate Alex Rins. "Last year because of the injury I couldn't be here, so the desire to race is a lot. Overall I feel good, in Australia we reduced the gap to the winner, which finally fell below one second per lap, so I'm quite satisfied. We'll see if we'll be as in tune with the bike as we were last week. There is a lot of hard braking here, so we will definitely struggle a lot, as in Japan for example we suffered a lot from rear wheel lift. A lot will depend on the set-up and the tires. In 2023 everyone opted for the medium in the front, this time replaced by the soft, so to save a soft I think I will choose the hard," he declared.
The powertrain the 28-year-old will use will be different from that of his brand mate: "The base of the engine is the same, the configuration changes, and the one I am adopting is the one I tried in private testing, which allows for more cornering speed, while perhaps you lose more on entry. My top speed is 2 km/h higher. However, it is good to be on different units to provide various information."
Regarding instead the device mounted on his M1 that adjusts the bike's ground clearance, the Spaniard explained, "I started using it in Suzuki. By pressing a button, when here for example you come out of the last corner the bike goes down and then, after braking in Turn 1 it goes back up and on the way out it goes down again. To prevent the process from being replicated in fast corners you lock it. It is useful on circuits with many straights. It is a mechanical tool. When the front suspension extends to X millimeters it lowers. It doesn't bother me to have to activate and lock it, it's clear that you do it many times."
The goals are also clear for him: "It's not realistic to think you can win, but the mentality has to be that, you have to go out on the track thinking about winning. I believe in any case that you can be in the second group. Is there tension between Pecco and Jorge? No, theirs is a clean duel," he concluded.
