Japan MotoGP gains for Yamaha will be “a matter of rear grip”

Fabio Quartararo says any steps forward Yamaha can make for Sunday’s MotoGP Japanese Grand Prix will be “a matter of grip” and “not a matter of set-up”.

After strong showings at the three previous MotoGP rounds, the Japanese GP weekend has been harder for Yamaha.

The stop-and-go nature of the Motegi layout works against the M1’s lack of power and rear grip under acceleration, with Quartararo able to get out of Q1 but only to qualify 12th before finishing there in the sprint.

While top representative of the Japanese manufacturers, Quartararo was 14.645s off the lead and believes the greasy conditions in the sprint hindered his charge.

“It was a difficult sprint,” he said.

“The track conditions affect our results. If there's grip, we're okay, if there's no grip, we are far from the front.

“It was raining a little bit, and these conditions are difficult for us.

“We have to take this experience on board and see if there's something we can improve.

“But it's not a matter of the set-up, it's more a matter of rear grip.”

Team-mate Alex Rins’ crew made a major set-up change for the sprint having failed to make much of a step between Friday practice and qualifying.

While he felt an improvement, Rins was almost 10 seconds adrift of Quartararo in the sprint in 16th.

“We tried a big change on the bike, something different from the quali to the sprint race because the step that we made between Friday afternoon and FP2 on Saturday morning was very small, and I couldn't feel the improvement,” he noted.

“So, we took the risk of doing something bolder for the sprint race, and we found something.

“We're still super far from the front, but the engineers are analysing the data because the rear contact with the track did improve a little.”