Fabio Quartararo says his emphatic second straight MotoGP win in the Portuguese Grand Prix “is only the start” as he heads to the Jerez venue he dominated at last season.
The factory Yamaha racer claimed the marque’s third successive win to start 2021-the first time Yamaha has done so since 2010- by a commanding 4.6 seconds over Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia despite falling to sixth from pole off the start.
He soon found himself fighting through the leading group of riders before finally taking the lead from Alex Rins just prior to mid-distance, though the Suzuki racer kept him honest before crashing out at Turn 5 just six laps from the end.
Quartararo reckons that he has “grown mentally” in recent months following an at times character building ’20 campaign, remarking that his second straight win is “just the start” as he now holds a comfortable 15 point margin in the riders standings over Bagnaia.
“First of all I don’t want to think about the championship, just want to think about the great victory today in which I had amazing pace,” said Quartararo.
“I’m very happy because I feel like we can do a great job during the year, and I feel I have grown mentally a lot.
“It was great to be out in front and push to the limit, I knew we had a little bit extra pace over Rins behind but unfortunately for him he made a mistake, it was one of the strongest races I’ve ever done.
“I preferred the Qatar race but this was a different kind of race, when you have pace like that you are so impressed with yourself and the team.
“My start wasn’t bad, we are just struggling with the start device that we are still missing but when you have a race like that you can push the Japanese engineers to bring the device as soon as possible because our bike has a lot of potential but if you lose the opportunities at the start it makes things really difficult.
“I’m really impressed with today and I think it’s only the beginning because I feel great mentally and on the bike, it’s been a long time since I’ve felt this happy.”
Quartararo decided to go a different direction in tyre choice relative to the bulk of the grid, electing to opt for the hard rear compared to the favoured medium rear for most of his competitors.
The five-time premier class victor says he had “a little extra confidence” with the hard rear after trying it in sub-optimal conditions during warm-up on Sunday morning, adding that he expected the chasing Rins to struggle in the latter stages of the encounter after choosing the medium rear rubber.
“For me it wasn’t really a gamble (using hard rear tyre) because in warm-up we were so fast, we had the worst conditions (for the tyre) as it was cold and the tyre was used and reheated and we were still fast so I was not really worried and I had a bit of extra confidence with it,” continued Quartararo.
“I knew that Rins was on the medium and that he would drop off later on in the race, especially with the hot conditions.
“We shouldn’t expect to be competitive at Jerez just because we won the two races last year, we saw Miguel (Oliveira) last year (in Portimao) and he struggled this weekend so I want to stay calm and keep working hard like we did this weekend.”
