Quartararo disappointed by Yamaha’s new engine

Yamaha MotoGP star Fabio Quartararo has admitted he “expected much better” from what he was given to try in the in-season Misano test.

Specifically, though he tried to be coy about it, Quartararo struggled to hide his disappointment at the 2024 prototype engine he had sampled for the first time in Monday’s running, after having spent so much of last and this season crying out for more power.

The 2021 MotoGP champion is having his worst season in the premier class this year, with just one sprint podium and one Sunday podium across a total of 26 attempts and even a top-10 finish in the standings looking increasingly unlikely.

His situation has lent itself to easy parallels with Honda’s six-time champion Marc Marquez, with both of their respective Japanese employers having been outdeveloped by MotoGP’s European-based manufacturers.

And like Marquez found himself underwhelmed by the offering in the Misano test, so too did Quartararo.

“I tested and the feeling was…” answered Quartararo when asked about the prototype engine specifically, before pivoting: “I expected much better, from this test. But we have to stay positive and try to analyse what happened and to improve for the Valencia [post-season] test.”

Asked again about the engine specifically, he said: “I cannot say right now. I need to test more. But like I said, I expected better from this engine.”

He then opened up when pressed further: “The feeling is different but, like I said, I think I expected more power. More power. It is a little bit difficult to say something really positive about the engine.”

Curiously, despite his disappointment, he said his feedback was similar to that offered by test rider Cal Crutchlow when he had sampled the 2024 prototype earlier at Motorland Aragon – albeit with the caveat that “it’s difficult because here [at Misano] is a lot of grip, where he tried [it] was no grip at all”.

He returned to that grip level point a little later, indicating that he saw data from Misano after a race weekend of being of a limited value.

“The biggest thing for us is, when the track is high grip, it changes totally our bike. I did [1m]31.4[s] with almost 20 laps on the tyre. And this is my qualifying lap from the weekend.

“I mean, of course the others are much faster than us. But the gap for them, [between] when there is low grip and high grip, is much smaller than [for] us. Our pace improves almost one second, seven tenths, eight tenths. For them it’s not as much.

“Every time you go out, many bikes are turning, [putting down] Michelin rubber, Michelin rubber. And it’s a track where you spin [the rear tyre] a lot, so you leave a lot of the tyre. If you go to Turn 3 right now, it’s black [from the rubber]. So, then when you open the throttle [coming through there], on the race weekend you have to control because it’s sliding. [Now] you can stay wide open, it’s fake.”

Quartararo did find something positive –…