Fabio Quartararo provides intriguing update about upcoming Yamaha engine

For the third time in as many rounds, Fabio Quartararo ran a 'new' Yamaha engine for the British MotoGP at Silverstone.

It took his total number of engines used this season to seven (out of nine) but the Frenchman is still eagerly awaiting the most promising specification tried at June’s private Valencia test.

“We are working on it, to have it ready. I think this can also be a good help for us,” Quartararo said at Silverstone.

“I'm pushing to have it as soon as possible.

“I would like to have it tomorrow, but it's going to be difficult. I'm pushing every day to have it as fast as possible.

“If we can have it in Misano, Aragon or whatever, but as early as possible.”

The 2021 world champion is keen to get his hands on the powerplant since it helped restore some of the M1’s former handling prowess.

“It's better, because we found more or less 2021 and 2022 handling,” said Quartararo, who took his and Yamaha’s most recent MotoGP wins in the opening half of the 2022 campaign.

“Of course, like always, when you take a positive, you lose another thing [top speed].

“But what I'm struggling with right now is to ride the bike in a natural way.

“You push but you feel that there is something missing and with this [Valencia] engine it's better. But we lose some speed.

“So it's different, but I prefer to, like in the past, lose in the straight and be faster in the corners, than be fast in the straight and super slow in the curves.”

Quartararo has been using one of the multiple engine options from the Valencia test since Assen, revealing later in the Silverstone weekend that he had a different spec in each of his bikes.

“Basically, we tried three engines in Valencia. One [the most promising] is going to take a bit more time, but we are using two engine specs this weekend and one will arrive later during the year,” Quartararo explained.

But mixing engine specs and electronics made for a complicated British MotoGP weekend.

“We have two different specs, then we tried some differences on the electronics, but the thing is that the two engines are completely different in the way of riding,” said Quartararo.

“One bike is much more heavy [handling] but has better stopping performance. The other bike is more light but doesn't stop. So you get to one braking zone [with one engine] and you go, ‘oh f**k, I could brake later’, or you brake too late [with the other engine].”

The end result left Quartararo nowhere near his goal of direct Qualifying 2 access and starting just 18th on the grid. The 25-year-old then returned to his usual position as the top rider on a Japanese bike in both races but was only eleventh at the flag.

“Just before the Sprint we were trying way too many things, one bike to the other and I was going into the qualifying without any reference,” he said. “With one bike I had to ride in one way, with the other one in another way, so I was completely lost.

“For the Sprint I said, I want to have a base that I know more or less and it was much better. Still not very good, but at least we finished not super far from Jack [Miller] who was seventh. But we struggled quite a lot this weekend.”

Quartararo's testing workload won’t have been helped by recent injuries for team-mate Alex Rins and development rider Cal Crutchlow, again replaced by Remy Gardner at Silverstone.

“I was more like a test rider than a [race] rider during the last races, so at the moment, I prefer to focus also a little bit more on trying to be as fast as possible," Quartararo said.

"Because it's been a long time since I have not been using the same bike for at least two days in a row.

“It's not too many new items, it's too many different bikes. Four laps, change of bike. Four laps, change of bike. Time attack – but with which bike?” he said.

“Even last year, at the end of the season, we knew the bike was not so great, but we kept our base and it was me putting the bike to the extreme limit. 

"And right now we cannot really do that, because I have no idea where the limit of the bike is.”

After 10 of 20 rounds, Quartararo is 14th in the world championship, with 49 points.