Hope for Yamaha? - Fabio Quartararo On New Yamaha Aero Package
Categories: MotoGP
Despite yet another ruined race weekend, Fabio Quartararo is feeling hopeful. Yamaha’s new aero package might be the basis for an improved M1.
After nothing went right for Fabio Quartararo in the wet qualifying session at Silverstone and the race weekend was virtually over on Saturday morning with P22 on the starting grid, the 2021 World Champion showed a solid race on race Sunday.
The Frenchman worked his way up to P7 before colliding with Luca Marini and dragging his Yamaha M1, now a naked bike without front fairing, into the pits.
That he even scored a point, in the end, was little balm on the battered Yamaha soul.
However, despite another poor result, slight hope arises in the camp of the Japanese. The new aero package could be the first basis for an improved M1.
Fabio Quartararo explains: “We have tried a new fairing. We will keep the fairing, it is really interesting. We saw that the handling wasn’t bad, and hopefully, the downforce is better too.”
The new Yamaha aero package - a first step?
The plan, after testing the effect on the M1’s handling at Silverstone, is to test the extent to which the new fairing improves wheelie tendency at the Austrian Grand Prix in Spielberg.
“How it affects the wheelie tendency we don’t know because you don’t have enough acceleration phases here. We’ll have a good look at that in Austria then.”
“I think that for the Red Bull Ring, we will use our standard bike with the new fairing,” Quartararo announced.
While the new fairing is not necessarily directly better than the previous basis, the Yamaha factory rider is pleased that the new development is already not worse than its predecessor.
“I think we need to ride it on more tracks to really see the advantage. But it is true that it was not worse. We tested three fairing variants in the pre-season and all three variants were clearly worse. With this fairing, it seems to be at least equal or better.”
