Fabio Quartararo said he was ‘really happy’ with his Misano race performance in which he was narrowly beaten to his first MotoGP win by Marc Marquez.
The Petronas SRT man hailed his ‘incredible’ battle with the reigning five time premier class champion, having led 23 of the 25 laps and only losing the lead halfway round the final tour.
Despite missing out on pole in Saturday’s qualifying session-ultimately lining up third-the Frenchman quickly made up for it in the race, jumping Pol Espargaro’s KTM at the start before running down factory Yamaha man Maverick Vinales to move into the lead on the second lap.
Marquez though looked even faster, and after manoeuvring his way into second chased down Quartararo after a few laps and remained in his wheel tracks until the pair started the final tour, snatching the lead into Turn 1.
Despite Quartararo re-passing the Spaniard into Turn 4 he was unable to strike back after he once again fell behind on the entry to Turn 8, and was forced to settle for second after Marquez defended well across the final few corners.
A satisfied Quartararo explained after the race though that he was ‘very happy’ to be in the position to fight Marquez for victory, even if he had been denied this time.
“It was incredible, first of all I had this kind of race last year in Japan, but it was not Marc Marquez behind in my rookie year of MotoGP so it was really tough,” said Quartararo.
“I think I did the best I could have done, the power of the Honda on the straight is huge as he got past me down the short straight into Turn 1, I overtook him again at Turn 4 but as soon as we got onto the next straight it was really tough to hold on.
“I went a little wide and then I had to miss contact with Marquez, and then Turn 11 I did well but couldn’t get past at Turn 14 as he closed the door but I’m really happy to be able to fight with him and I hope to have more battles like this in the future.
Quartararo reiterated that he was confident his time in the spotlight would come, and that keeping calm and making sure mistakes don’t creep in through desperation would be key notching up his first premier class success.
“We’ll go step by step, first of all we have to remember it’s my rookie year, to lead the race with someone like Marquez behind is and make no mistakes and stay calm is great.
“Even before the race I wasn’t stressed, everyone thought I would be because of the first corner crash at Silverstone but I told everyone I would do a good race, and we did nearly a perfect one.”
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