MotoGP: Quartararo Says Yamaha 'Far from Top' from Rivals Post Qatar GP

Fabio Quartararo voiced his displeasure with Yamaha's 2024 MotoGP bike after the Qatar Grand Prix, pointing out that the Japanese manufacturer is far behind its rivals. Due to the M1 bike's inadequacy in improving upon its predecessor, Yamaha experienced their first winless campaign in MotoGP in 20 years last season. There has been little improvement for Yamaha in 2024 despite the fact that they have received concessions and have recruited new engineering talent from competing teams. The 2021 world champion Quartararo had a rough race due to issues, most notably tyre wear, which he thought would hurt his performance and ended up finishing in a dismal eleventh place. Even teammate Alex Rins had a rough go of it in his Yamaha debut, ending in sixteenth place. Quartararo was very forthright in his evaluation of Yamaha's present predicament, which showed how unhappy he was with the Japanese company's results.

After the first race, Yamaha racer Quartararo said: "It is what it is. This is when you really see the difference in how people work really hard and we are still very, very far from them. So of course it's really difficult because I know my potential and I know where I can be."

"We are further last year. We have improved a little bit, but they are even faster. They are even better and faster than last year. So the gap between all the European manufacturers and us is bigger. Even to Honda, I felt that today we were missing something. They are also struggling a lot, but I felt like we were even worse today," he added.

MotoGP: Honda and Yamaha

Not seeing any major improvements from Japanese manufacturers in the 2024 Qatar GP was discouraging, to say the least. Given the upgrades Honda made to their bikes this season, it was thought that they would do better than Yamaha, even though Yamaha was expected to show some progress. Regardless, Fabio Quartararo proved his mettle as a rider by defeating his Japanese competitors in the Sprint and the main event. But this success is more a reflection of his skills than of the technology.

Yamaha MotoGP riders Fabio Quartararo and Alex Rins were sceptical of their M1 bikes' ability to compete at the Qatar Grand Prix. This common worry has an impact on the riders individually and casts doubt on Yamaha's ability to enhance their performance.

Despite making substantial improvements to their motorcycles, both Japanese manufacturers have failed to match the performance of their European competitors. This lack of significant advancement highlights the difficulties encountered by Yamaha and Honda in the extremely competitive MotoGP circuit.