Fabio Quartararo breathes sigh of relief after near-highside “many, many times”

Fabio Quartararo nearly highsided on several occasions in the Australian MotoGP.

The Yamaha rider started from P18 but turned it into a decent P9 finish thanks to his late race pace, but later revealed he was fortunate to remain upright.

Quartararo had stormed to 10th after a brilliant first lap although he lost places to Raul Fernandez, Johann Zarco and Jack Miller.

In the final seven laps, Quartararo overtook the same three riders to claim ninth place, 18.757s from the front.

“It’s a shame. In the first laps I felt really bad with the rear tyre,” he told TNT Sports.

“[I nearly] highsided many, many times.

“We have to understand why it takes so long for us to warm the rear tyre.

“Then, we can be happy with the last 15 laps. We had quite good pace.

“Hopefully we can find out how to warm up the tyre properly.”

Twice at recent rounds Quartararo has ambled over the finishing line after running out of fuel but there was luckily no repeat at Phillip Island.

“The fuel was okay! At this track there is no issue with fuel. We had enough to finish the race,” he said.

Quartararo later added: "I had a really good start, but unfortunately the first part of the race was difficult.

“I had some near highsides, and I couldn't keep up with the pace of the front guys.

“The second part of the race was really good, and I can be happy because especially the last ten laps were really nice. I think there are some things we can learn from this race."

'Big step in the right direction'

Yamaha teammate Alex Rins started from ninth but finished 13th.

"I'm satisfied about what we did in today's race,” Rins said.

“We gave it our 100%. But what I'm not 100% satisfied about is the result.

“It's true that we improved the bike a little bit by changing some things.

“The gap was a little bit less compared to the Sprint race, but we need to keep working.

“We still have some problems, which the team has already identified, but now we need time to solve them."

Team director Massimo Meregalli added: "This was a difficult race weekend for us, but today we ended it in a better way than we started it.

“Though there is still plenty to work on, our riders were more competitive in today's dry and warmer conditions.

“Fabio had an impressive start and end to his race, and it was good to see him fight and overtake.

“Alex had a similar pace to Fabio, so he too made a step in the right direction today.

“It was just a shame that he was missing something at the end that prohibited him from engaging in battle.

“We will carefully analyse today's data as we prepare for next week's Thailand GP."