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Maio Meregalli is always decidedly cryptic to interpret. Yamaha's team manager does not easily let himself fall into enthusiasms, and although the Sepang tests clearly showed a nice improvement for the Yamaha project, Meregalli prefers not to unbalance himself too much, strengthened by an experience that has taught him to wait before aiming too high.
The Yamaha, however, has definitely impressed, thanks in part to the small advantage derived from being able to be on track with the factory riders as early as during the shakedown, a scenario that has certainly helped the engineers to work better on the M1.
"We didn't miss anything and, at least, looking at the times and everything, to me it would be like saying that the situation is positive - Meregalli explained - At least the stopwatches gave some good feedback. Now there is Fabio who is third after the time attack in the morning. In short, it's not bad. It's been a positive five days. Let's say we started to see something during the shakedown. Personally I was waiting today to understand the form factor of everyone, I was waiting for this morning to see, after all the official riders had done their time attack, to have a true situation anyway, where we were. We started these tests by saying, come on, let's do 56 and then go home. I said that ironically."
Also because you did it on the last day. You can do it on the first one.
"I made the joke at the beginning of the first day of the shakedown. Then yesterday, when I saw Fabio's ideal time, which was 57'0, this morning, I said to myself that it's close. I said to myself come on we can do it today. I definitely don't care so much about the position right now, but to have significantly reduced the gap between the fastest and us....that is good. Last year we were definitely worse off."
What is this leap forward due to?
"The bike, as you know so much, has not been radically changed as we are used to doing, we have upgraded several areas. Almost every step we made, improvement or modification gave something. In my opinion, having four riders on the M1 is also starting to give us a little something. I really liked how we started. Let's say we started the running-in period in Japan with each other. We all went to assemble the bikes and more than one bike assembly I called home and said it was team building. From there everyone started to interface well. We started testing together here and for me this new relationship with Pramac can only give advantages. We will try to take advantage of them as much as possible."
In the box according to Quartararo, work is much better today than in the past.
"We have absolutely speeded up the working method, the material is the same for everyone. When it was time anyway to try some things, three riders approved it. Okay, the fourth one doesn't need to try it. Same thing, three riders didn't give it the okay, no need for the fourth rider to try it, let's move on. This however allows you to speed up the development and direct the engineers. It's a little bit of everything, the philosophy, the approach, the way of doing things, the exchange of information. It used to be only in one direction, and now it's...."
Pramac's arrival has also been a game changer.
"In my opinion it helped a little bit for everyone to open up a little bit more and collaborate, listen to each other, don't take things for granted. That's what it's taking to make this step."
In addition to Augusto Fernandez, there was also Dovizioso, who continues to go strong.
"We know that there will be a lot to do during the season anyway, so we thought one rider was not enough. We're going to try to do six wild cards, so we're going to do the wild cards with Augusto. As soon as he had a chance to do a mini time attack, he had a good lap, so we are taking advantage of that. Unfortunately, he will lap very little in time attack conditions. We are also somewhat distorting him to go from a rider to a test rider, but still for us it is important that he is left with the speed, because certainly we could have him do maybe the dirty work and use Crutchlow and Dovi instead for other things. Augusto will do the races. We definitely need to slightly revise how the test team is organized, though, because doing six wildcards is not the same as doing one. We have to make it a little bit more performing, a little bit more responsive."
Have these tests changed your goals for the season?
"It's the first test, so in a week's time we will certainly be able to have some certainty about where we actually are and how we will start for the championship. Now in my opinion having goals is difficult, because we come from a complicated season anyway. Today we finish this test, after several years, in a different way, in a positive way. However, it's a bit early also to have illusions. It's better to keep our feet on the ground and face right now each test or each race on its own."
