Fabio Quartararo has expressed his frustration over Yamaha testing “way too many things” on its bike during MotoGP race weekends in 2024.
The Japanese manufacturer is undertaking an extensive development programme to drag itself out of its current slump, experimenting with a wide range of new parts for the M1.
Having been given a number of advantages under MotoGP’s new concession system, Yamaha is also trialling new bits and pieces during grands prix after running them first in private testing.
However, 2021 champion Quartararo believes this approach is turning out to be counterproductive, as he is constantly having to test different specifications of the bike without getting enough time to properly evaluate them.
“Just before the sprint we were trying way too many things, [going from] one bike to another and I was going to qualifying without any reference,” he said.
“With one bike I had to ride in one way, with the other one in another way. So I was completely lost.
“We are already struggling much more than usual, but I was really lost. I said I want to have a base that I know more or less and in the sprint it was much better. Still not very good but at least we finished not super far from Jack [Miller].”
Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
For Quartararo, the problem is not the excessive number of new developments that he has to test, but how fundamentally different one bike is from another, complicating his job at a time when he is also supposed to be working on pure performance.
As an example, the Frenchman revealed that he had to constantly switch between one M1 that was heavy but had better stopping performance and another bike that was lighter but didn’t stop as well during the British Grand Prix.
“It’s not too many new items, it’s too many different bikes in every single run,” he explained. “I do four laps, change of bike, [another] four laps, change of bike.
“[We do] time attack, but with which bike? So it’s complicated.
“Two years ago we had the same bike [all year]. Even last year at the end of the season we knew the bike was not the same, but we kept our base and it’s me putting the bike to the extreme limit.
“Right now, we can’t really do it because I have no idea where the limit of the bike is.”
Quartararo explained Yamaha’s rationale behind its rapid development rate, saying new parts usually offer either improved performance or help fix issues on the existing bike.
However, that hasn’t always been the case for Yamaha this year, and his work on race weekends makes him feel more like a test rider in 2024.
“It’s too much but you know sometimes you expect things to be better and not to be worse,” he said. “Or say sometimes we have new items and we expect them to be much better.
“Sometimes the one that you expect the most [from] is the one that doesn’t really bring some positives.
“Right now, I think I was more like a test rider than [a race] rider during the last races.
“At the moment I prefer to also focus a little bit more on trying to be as fast as possible because it has been a long time that I’m not using the same bike for two days in a row.”
