“Fast” Fabio Quartararo “had the speed today, but...”

Fabio Quartararo lost half of his 13.2s deficit to race winner Jorge Martin in the opening laps of Sunday’s Indonesian MotoGP.

The Monster Yamaha rider struggled to generate heat in the rear tyre, leaving him 6.7s behind Martin after the opening four laps.

The time lost dropped the Frenchman from a season-best sixth on the grid to 13th - despite four riders crashing ahead.

But once up to speed, Quartararo progressed up the order to a season-best equalling seventh place, losing only 0.8s to Martin over the final four laps.

Without the early setback, Quartararo felt he might have challenged Francesco Bagnaia, Franco Morbidelli and Marco Bezzecchi for what became the final podium place.

“I lost 7-8 positions on the first laps because all weekend it took us more than 4-5 laps to warm up the rear medium tyre,” Quartararo explained.

“I was fast but clearly the problem was warming up the tyre because then I was on the same pace as Bezzecchi, more or less.

“But we lost six seconds on the first laps and then we were 13th. We are [still] slower than the others, but today was much closer to Morbidelli, Bagnaia…

“More than the position, what we have to look at now is how fast we are going.”

After struggling to overtake in the Sprint, a switch from the soft to hard front tyre for the grand prix meant, “I could brake super-late and make some overtakes, also a few riders made some small mistakes ahead.”

That allowed Quartararo to take the chequered flag in seventh place, out of 12 finishers, equalling his best finish of the season for the third time in a row.

However, even with the early loss of pace, Quartararo was much closer to victory than at both previous Emilia Romagna (+20.9s) and San Marino (+17.6s) Misano races.

“We had the speed today, but we are still missing quite a lot to be happy,” said the 2021 world champion, adding: “But today was quite good… We made some good laps.”

Quartararo’s best lap was 0.277s slower than the quickest of the race by Enea Bastianini.

Alex Rins: "One of my toughest races"

Team-mate Alex Rins finished twelfth and last before being promoted to eleventh by a post-race tyre pressure penalty for Takaaki Nakagami.

Rins also struggled to generate heat in the rear tyre and, after being overtaken by Joan Mir, remained in last place from lap 6 until the chequered flag on lap 27.

“It was so difficult for me to warm the tyre, we lost a lot of positions on the first lap because I went into corner 7 with no throttle and lost completely the rear,” Rins revealed.

“We knew it would be hard for us to get temperature into the rear tyre [but] this was [worse] than we expected. I am a little but sad, frustrated because we started Friday quite well, but we couldn’t not progress as I wanted.

“Saturday was quite hard and today was one of my toughest races in the world championship - I finished last! We need to check what happened and analyse.

“For sure it is not the place I want to be. But, looking forward to the next race. Luckily it’s next week.”