Quartararo: We’ll have to give 100%... to stay in the top ten

Quartararo’s victory (from second on the grid) last season also saw his title lead peak at 91-points over Francesco Bagnaia, before his advantage then evaporated with just two podiums in the second half of the campaign.

Engine performance was seen as Yamaha’s Achilles heel, but the upgraded 2023 powerplant is yet to deliver an improvement in results.

Quartararo has only one podium to his name from the 12 races so far, including Sprints, and was 13-15 seconds slower than last year in the past two rounds at Le Mans and Mugello.

But his first concern at Sachsenring is to break a miserable run of three Qualifying 1 appearances, which have left a rider that only missed the front-row four times on his way to the 2021 title to start 16th, 13th and 15th on the grid.

“To be honest the main goal for me this weekend is trying to be in the top 10 from tomorrow,” Quartararo said. “To at least secure a good place in qualifying, because the last qualifyings were terrible for us.

“We miss a lot, already from last year to 2021, but especially this year, I am struggling with new tyres to do one [fast] lap. We have to find a solution.

“I’m struggling to understand because we didn’t make big changes, but it has changed totally the way of riding my bike. We have to find a solution.

“Everywhere we go now, even in terms of pace we are a little bit slower than last year, but the thing is now ten riders have stepped up the game let’s say. So we have more riders on top with a small gap and we stay much more behind.

“Hopefully in a short track like this, we can be more in front and like I said from tomorrow morning we will have to give our 100% to stay in the top ten.”

Quartararo’s words echoed those of team-mate Franco Morbidelli at Mugello last weekend, who said that it now takes an ‘unbelievable performance’ for the Yamaha riders to be in the top ten and warned there would be no ‘magical fix’.

With everything else on the bike virtually unchanged, after new chassis and aero parts were rejected, the Italian also pointed to engine character as the root cause of the current issues.

“To give more power to the engine, we lost some rideability, unfortunately, and that thing is killing us right now,” he said.

Engine design cannot be changed during the racing season.