Fabio Quartararo knew what he was doing, and knew he wouldn’t be able to do it for long. Riding this fast – taking this much risk – was unsustainable, he was certain.
But to hell with it. It was the French Grand Prix, after all. Lap after lap, the home hero pushed on, until he was tipped off.
The Le Mans crowd – 297,000 of them over the race weekend, a huge percentage of them trackside to see the sole French premier-class world champion in history – roared as Quartararo’s Yamaha soared. Tenth became ninth became eighth became seventh. On lap 14, Quartararo moved up to sixth, closer to the front of a MotoGP race than he’d been all year.
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Three laps later, Quartararo teetered on his high-speed trapeze, and crashed. The packed grandstands, aware of what they’d just seen, briefly quietened, then rose as one. Quartararo, squatted beside his broken bike in the gravel trap, could only shake his head as they applauded. It was the most minuscule of victories, but better than the alternative. Being able to see the fight at the front – even if he couldn’t be part of it – wasn’t much, but it was something.
“To be honest, I’m happy,” he said.
“Unfortunately, we crashed, but being in this position, in P6 without many crashes in front of me … today was the first race where really we were able to fight.
“I’m fighting with riders I used to fight with in the past, like [Aprilia’s] Aleix [Espargaro]. I was seeing [Aprilia’s] Maverick [Vinales] and [Ducati’s] Marc [Marquez] in front of me.
“So I’m happy, because it’s the first race this year that I feel I’m competitive. Step by step we are improving … it’s going to be a long way, but we will arrive.”
A TWO-YEAR TUMBLE FROM THE TOP
Le Mans was a fleeting feeling that elicited memories of the good old days for Quartararo.
On the eve of this weekend’s Grand Prix of Catalunya, it’s hard not to rewind two years to the 2022 event on the outskirts of Barcelona. Armed with a new two-year contract signed just days earlier, Quartararo – then the reigning world champion – took his second of what were to be three wins that season by 6.473secs, light years in MotoGP terms. It was an exhibition as much as it was a race.
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When Quartararo won again in Germany next time out, his championship lead was 34 points, and he was 91 points ahead of Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia, who was his match for pace but had already crashed out four times in the opening 10 rounds.
It was the last time Quartararo was MotoGP’s benchmark.
As Yamaha’s development stalled and Quartararo’s frantic efforts to stay in front faded, Bagnaia stayed aboard his Desmosedici and tore chunks out of the Frenchman’s advantage. Eight races after Germany – when Quartararo crashed out in Australia – he’d lost the championship lead. Two rounds later, Bagnaia became Ducati’s first world champion since Casey Stoner 15 years previously.
While 2022 slipped through Quartararo’s fingers, 2023 was a disaster.
Yamaha’s woes – a lack of traction out of corners, with the absence of the sweet handling that was for so long its calling card – only worsened. Three measly podiums saw Quartararo go from championship runner-up to 10th in 12 months as Yamaha got left behind, Ducati riders filling six of the top 10 places in the world championship, won again by Bagnaia.
Then things really went sideways – then backwards – as the calendar flipped to 2024.
From the first four races of this season before France, Quartararo managed to qualify inside the top 10 just once, finished an average of 22 seconds adrift of the race-winner, and started a barely-believable 23rd on a 25-bike grid at Jerez.
Quartararo scavenged whatever points he could, moving forward in every race and making small gains, but was mostly a big-name afterthought.
Fabio Quartararo’s 2024 season, race-by-race
Rd 1: Qatar
Qualified: 1:51.918 (15th), 1.129secs off pole (Jorge Martin, Ducati)
Sprint: 12th (+12.863secs behind winner, Martin)
Grand Prix: 11th (+17.701secs, Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati)
Fastest lap: 1:53.468, 17th (+0.811secs, Pedro Acosta, GasGas)
Rd 2: Portugal
Qualified: 1:38.322 (9th), 0.616secs off pole (Enea Bastianini, Ducati)
Sprint: 9th (+7.501secs, Maverick Vinales, Aprilia)
Grand Prix: 7th (+20.130secs, Martin)
Fastest lap: 1:39.564, 17th (+0.879secs, Bastianini)
Rd 3: Americas
Qualified: 2:02.089 (16th), +1.225secs off pole (Vinales)
Sprint: 15th (+15.574secs, Vinales)
Grand Prix: 12th (+22.899secs, Vinales)
Fastest lap: 2:03.938, 17th (+1.363secs, Vinales)
Rd 4: Spain
Qualified: 1:50.100 (23rd), +3.327secs off pole (Marc Marquez, Ducati)
Sprint: 5th (+15.052secs, Martin)
Grand Prix: 15th (+32.015secs, Bagnaia)
Fastest lap: 1:38.641, 18th (+1.192secs, Bagnaia)
Rd 5: France
Qualified: 1:30.686 (8th), +0.767secs off pole (Martin)
Sprint: 10th (+12.699, Martin)
Grand Prix: DNF (crashed on lap 17 of 27 while in sixth place)
Fastest lap: 1:31.686, 9th (+0.579secs, Bastianini)
BETTER THE DEVIL YOU KNOW
As his 2024 laboured out of the starting gates, Quartararo – nicknamed ‘El Diablo’ (the devil) – had a bigger, longer-term decision to make.
That contract signed before Catalunya 2022 was set to expire, and as Yamaha’s performance looked to have bottomed out, Quartararo needed to decide his future. He could look to move for the final two seasons of the current regulations set to govern MotoGP until the significant changes slated for 2027, but where?
Ducati was a closed shop; Honda a basket case in even worse shape than Yamaha since its talisman, Marquez, decamped to Ducati.
KTM had teen tyro Pedro Acosta emerging as the spearhead of its next generation. Aprilia had won races in 2023, but had no proven history of sustained success – and its financial offer of four million Euros annually was, as reported by Autosport, one-third of what was on the table from Yamaha, a speculative play at best.
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The picture was clear. Quartararo needed Yamaha – and Yamaha needed him. So their union continued in April, for a hefty fee that was based half on past performance, the rest on a belief that a winner – both rider and manufacturer – doesn’t forget how to win forever.
It’s a gamble for Quartararo, but one the 25-year-old has time on his side to take.
Yamaha committed to throwing extra resource and bodies at resurrecting their MotoGP project, with an exhaustive testing program between Grands Prix, the hiring of key staff such as ex-Ducati engineer Max Bartolini as technical director, and a commitment to altering how the factory operates to reflect the model employed by the European marques, who have ruled the roost in MotoGP since Quartararo’s 2021 success.
Speaking in Portugal, when his new two-year deal was revealed, Quartararo explained his thinking – and the belief that while being in a position to win again will take time, that time will come.
“One of the reasons is the budget – in terms of improving the bike – is really high in Yamaha,” he said.
“The arrival of Max Bartolini from Ducati … he really brought us some good ideas. Yamaha can make it quick – not super quick because we need a little bit of time – but this is something super important and already next year it [the bike] can be quite different.
“What really made me want to stay was the way we totally change the way of working. Also some confidential projects for the future that is going to be huge, Yamaha is investing a lot in the project.
“When a brand like Yamaha – it is my sixth year this year – really wants to keep me, it’s loyalty from them also.”
PREPARED TO PUSH THE ENVELOPE
With his future secure and his employer pulling out all the stops – Yamaha brought a brand-new iteration of the YZR-M1 to the one-day test after the Spanish Grand Prix, a sign of its commitment – Quartararo knows he needs to work on himself, too.
At times over the past two years, his despair has occasionally and justifiably erupted in fits of frustration, right at the time Yamaha needs him to be its guiding light. It’ll undoubtedly happen again, but that cameo in France showed a path forward. It’s now up to him to traverse it.
“We got the ideas of what to improve, but it’s going to take time,” Quartararo said at Le Mans.
“The electronic [setting] we are using, or how we are using it, is not in a good way, but we are learning.
“Our bike [feels] super heavy, it’s not turning. But step by step we are trying to improve these things and I think we are going in a good way.”
While his machinery provides motivation and its progress can be measured mathematically, Quartararo knows his heart ruled his head in France. A return to his dominant days of 2022 this weekend in Barcelona is a pipedream, but weekends like Le Mans keep his spirits up and provide succour for his soul.
“I was completely at the limit from lap one, and it’s a miracle I didn’t crash earlier,” he said.
“But when you are in front of your home crowd, you want to give everything.
“It has been a couple of years where we’ve not been performing like we should, but running to the [pit] box after the crash and hearing the whole crowd shouting your name and calling on you is really emotional.
“For me, mentally, it was good. Today I think I was riding really, really well – and hopefully we can carry on like this.”