How MotoGP’s V4s are ganging up on Quartararo

Also, Red Bull Ring sees a MotoGP tech first. The circuit is MotoGP’s most demanding on brakes, so for the first time Brembo’s massive 355mm front disc rotors will be mandatory. These discs sit closer to the front wheel rim than any other, so what effect will that have on tyre temperature, always a tricky issue, especially for the Yamaha?

Of course, all this will become irrelevant if it rains on Sunday afternoon, as predicted by the latest weather forecasts.

After Red Bull Ring the paddock travels to Misano, where last year Quartararo was twice second, behind Pecco Bagnaia and Honda’s Marc Márquez, and then to Aragon where he qualified third for the 2021 race but was swamped by faster V4s down the Spanish track’s huge main straight. He took the chequered flag in eighth, with Aprilia, Ducati, Honda and KTM V4s in front of him.

Quartararo seems most worried about the two tracks that follow Aragon: Motegi and Buriram, which both feature numerous slow corner/long straight combinations. Indeed he believes their absence from the last two seasons helped his 2021 title charge.

“We can be fast at all the tracks, but which tracks really suit us? There is no track that really suits us. Of course, last year we didn’t go to Japan and we didn’t go to Thailand, and both are full of acceleration and long straights, so let’s see…”

In fact Quartararo finished second at Buriram in 2019, fighting with Márquez to the last corner, and second at Motegi, chasing Márquez all the way. But Aprilia and Ducati are now much more competitive than they were back then.

As Miller recently declared, the 2019 Desmosedici steered like a London bus, while the latest iteration turns like a Mini Cooper. And the difference between the performance of Aprilia’s latest 90-degree RS-GP and the 2019 bike with its narrow-angle V4 is night and day – in 2019 Aprilia struggled to get into the top ten.

There is one other factor that may help or hinder any of the bikes and riders at Red Bull Ring and Buriram. These tracks generate so much heat into the rear tyre that Michelin will revert to its earlier, stiffer rear slicks. I will never understand why Michelin designed a new rear for 2020, which required the manufactures to revise or redesign their motorcycles, but doesn’t work at all the circuits. Again, slick-tyre performance won’t be an issue if it rains this weekend.

After Thailand it’s Phillip Island, usually an inline-four-friendly circuit, then Sepang, where on MotoGP’s last visit in 2019 Quartararo qualified on pole but was once again overwhelmed by the pack in the race, finishing seventh.

Marmorini’s first efforts at a better 2023 M1 engine may already have been tested in Japan, where in recent weeks Yamaha has been busy with its Japanese test riders and Cal Crutchlow. Marmorini should be able to get more power out of the M1 but he will struggle to match the V4s, simply because an inline-four’s longer crankshaft, longer camshafts, worse airflow and greater width (which restricts the size of throttle bodies and induction trumpets) all get in the way.

And it’s not just power the M1 lacks, it’s also grip. Quartararo says so, as do the factory’s other experienced MotoGP riders, Andrea Dovizioso and Frankie Morbidelli, who have yet to score a single dry-race top-ten finish between them this year.

“Fabio brakes very well, releases the brake and has much faster speed in the middle of the corner, that’s it,” says Dovizioso. “If you have more speed in the corner then your acceleration is better. That’s why you see him battle with other bikes that have more grip.”

This, of course, is the joy of motorcycle racing – a super-talented rider can dance around on top of his machine and make it do things no one else can, i.e. Marc Márquez aboard Honda’s RC213V, Valentino Rossi on Yamaha’s early M1 and Casey Stoner on Ducati’s Desmosedici.

So what’s holding up Morbidelli, who came so close to winning the 2020 MotoGP title on a year-old M1?

The 27-year-old Italian is very up front about his situation.

“Fabio is a human being that does something I don’t do, so I’ll keep grinding, I’ll keep working, I’ll keep searching,” he said at Silverstone. “I am trying to brake deeper, work on the braking. But every time I improve in braking I immediately lose somewhere else. To be fast on this package you need to do everything perfectly. You need clearly to squeeze it to 200% and feel free. I still don’t have that, I’m still not free in doing things.”

Some people wonder why Yamaha is retaining Morbidelli for 2023. He has mostly under-performed since the start of last season, both on his old Petronas Yamaha and on the factory bike, which he inherited from Maverick Viñales.

Surely Yamaha has a performance clause written into his contract, so if he doesn’t achieve a certain level of results the contract is void? But no, there’s no such clause in his factory contract, possibly because when the factory team signed him there was little evidence that he had lost his mojo.

Perhaps Morbidelli will rediscover his mojo, perhaps he won’t.

Perhaps a better chassis with more grip might help? To that end, if I was Yamaha I wouldn’t stop at hiring Marmorini to build a better engine, I’d hire Moto2 dominators Kalex as chassis consultants.