Fabio Quartararo explains Yamaha progress after personal-best lap at Sepang

Fabio Quartararo ended this week’s MotoGP Sepang test third on the timesheets having set his best ever lap of the Sepang International Circuit.

The Frenchman had previously not broken the 1:57 barrier at the Malaysian venue, but he was able to dip into the 1:56s – the only non-Ducati rider to do so – on the final day of this week’s test.

“Very happy,” Quartararo said at the end of Friday in Sepang.

“My fastest lap was qualifying last year was a 1:57.5, so I think the gap is more than 0.8 seconds.

“I was saying that from 2019 to 2024 we improve 0.6 seconds, and from 2024 to 2025 0.8 seconds. Of course, we can be happy.

“We need to stay calm, it’s only the test, but I think it’s quite good.

“Last year in the test Pecco [Francesco Bagnaia] made a 1:56.6 or 1:56.5, and this is more or less the lap time that they did this year, so I think we can be pretty happy.”

Quartararo’s enthusiasm about his one-lap speed was amplified by the context of 2024, in which qualifying was the most difficult part of the weekend for Yamaha.

“The worst last year was not the race,” Quartararo explained. “It was especially one lap last year that was the problem because always we started super-far [back] and it was super-difficult to overtake.

“Right now, before I made my first time attack, I knew I was going to make a 1:56, because with Maio [Massimo Meregalli, Monster Energy Yamaha team manager] we make the joke the first day we arrive here that we will make a 1:56, but every day we were getting closer and closer and in the end it was the reality today.

“But last year the problem was that you put a new tyre and you don’t know the lap time that you’re going to do.

“On one lap today, in the past three days, it was really good.”

Fabio Quartararo explains Yamaha improvement

Quartararo put the improvement in performance down to a combination of his own riding style adjustments as well as technical updates to the YZR-M1.

“It looks similar but it’s not the same,” Quartararo said of the 2025 M1.

“Basically, it’s many electronics that have changed, the way I ride – we have new things on the bike.

“Of course it’s difficult to see what’s new, but lap-time-wise we can see that we were much quicker than last year.”

Although the changes have improved Quartararo’s feeling in some areas of his riding, the key issue from recent years remains.

“We improved a lot our feeling going into the corners, on change of direction also,” the 2021 World Champion said.

“But our weak point is grip.

“Today the track was really grippy, you can see it’s black from rubber. I will not say our lap time is fake because last year it was the same and we were one second from P1 – now we are 0.3 seconds [away].

“I’m looking forward to seeing when the track will be really low grip conditions; this is the worst conditions for us.”

Overall, though, Quartararo clearly feels that his has been Yamaha’s best off-season since he joined the factory team in 2021.

“I think that every year, especially from 2022–2024, we make one step, but Ducati and the others make two or three,” he said.

“I think this year we have reached to make much more steps. I think it’s a different riding style from 2019 or 2021, but I feel the bike is fast, so the riding style is slightly different from the past but I think it’s the first year that we managed to close the gap.

“In the past, we just improved but the others improved; or we improved but the others even more. Now I think that the gap is closer.”

Stronger not only over one lap

Quartararo’s enthusiasm for the new Yamaha package was not limited to its one-lap performance, however.

The French rider was able to make a couple of runs of multiple laps in succession while showing pace only a couple of tenths away from that of the leading Ducatis.

“It was not really a Sprint simulation; I had to make six laps with one setting and six laps with another setting, with new tyres,” the French rider explained.

“It was good. I think we have to consider that last year we were P11, P12 here, and now we are looking at the pace of Marc [Marquez], Pecco [Francesco Bagnaia], and Alex [Marquez] who are the fastest around here.

“So, I think the gap is quite big but I’m pretty happy about the lap time that we did, especially because it was not only one lap and that’s it.”