Fabio Quartararo<\/a> ended Friday at the Thai Grand Prix as the fastest Yamaha, but was 16th and 1.358s off the pace.<\/p>\n\u201cWe are still far off because we know how difficult it is to be two tenths fastest, especially after two days of testing [at the same track],\u201d he said on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, we are still very far away, but at least I gave it my all.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Quartararo, at this time, doesn\u2019t believe Yamaha has a clear direction on how the V4 M1 will develop and has warned that a new engine may not be ready until May\u2019s French Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think there is a clear direction yet,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to find it, but at least I\u2019m trying to work and do my best with the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know when it will arrive, but I think that at least until Le Mans we won\u2019t have any [new] engine. I think, I\u2019m not 100% sure, that for Brazil, the United States and Qatar, there won\u2019t be one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quartararo: I was a bit too optimistic about the bike<\/p>\n
The 2021 world champion has endured a frustrating winter on the V4 M1, with Quartararo giving the bike the middle finger on day one of the Buriram test.<\/p>\n
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He now accepts that he was \u201ctoo optimistic\u201d about the potential of the bike coming into this year and is now trying to approach the season with more calm.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve talked to my team members, the engineers, and I think I was a bit too optimistic about the bike\u2019s potential,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know what the potential is, and I don\u2019t want to go crazy or make mistakes.<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially for my image, which I think is the most important thing. I\u2019m trying to take everything more calmly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quartararo\u2019s best lap in Practice on Friday at Buriram proved to be around 0.4s slower than what he achieved in the same session last year on the inline-four M1.<\/p>\n
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He will face a tough Q1 group on Saturday morning that features Ducati\u2019s Pecco Bagnaia and Honda\u2019s Luca Marini.<\/p>\n
Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fabio Quartararo says he doesn\u2019t think \u201cthere is a clear direction yet\u201d with how Yamaha\u2019s 2026 MotoGP bike…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,16230,10671,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-508410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fabio-quartararo","tag-monster-energy-yamaha-motogp","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}