Fabio Quartararo had admitted that he “doesn’t really care” about fighting for the MotoGP riders title at the moment amid his and Yamaha’s current struggles for form.
Having found it difficult to make progress despite showing strong race pace in the season opening Portuguese Grand Prix weekend – the Frenchman securing tenth and eighth place results in the two races in Poritmao – Quartararo’s struggles continued in Argentina last weekend, particularly in the dry where he found it tough to even breach the top ten.
His difficulties were amplified by the fact team-mate Franco Morbidelli enjoyed his best weekend in sometime, the 2020 MotoGP vice-champion securing a pair of fourth place runs across the sprint encounter and grand prix – though Quartararo’s weekend did take an upturn after ending up seventh on Sunday despite being pushed wide on the opening lap to 16th by Takaaki Nakagami.
Quartararo was left encouraged by his form in the wet Argentina GP following his dry-weather struggles, describing his pace as “great”, though conceded that he currently “doesn’t really care” about fighting for a second premier class title as Yamaha continue to lack the speed needed to fight current trailblazers Ducati.
“The pace was great, the result is not the one we hope but starting 10th and going from last to seventh is OK so hopefully we can make it better for the next one,” explained Quartararo.
“Taka (Nakagami) was super aggressive, and I think it was not necessary to be that aggressive overtaking only one rider on the first lap.
“We have to take the positive that the pace we had in the wet was fast.
“It’s really critical for our bike because if there is no grip we struggle, here the grip was not so bad and we were fast.
“I have good potential in the wet but we have to keep working to find our best (in these conditions.)
“I don’t really care at the moment (about championship) it’s great for us to take points but right now even in the dry we are not on his (Francesco Bagnaia’s) level, we are fighting for it because our pre-season was not so good so we are still working on having a good base on the bike, but we will arrive.”
