How Portugal exposed the biggest threat to Quartararo’s MotoGP title defence

The Algarve Grand Prix was the 17th round of the 2021 MotoGP season. It took 17 races for new world champion Fabio Quartararo to finally register a DNF in a campaign in which he has been head and shoulders above the rest in his consistency.

And it was a timely point to finally crash out of a race, because it was a day that so easily could have blown the doors off the 2021 championship battle with Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia had the cards of fate fallen differently last month at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

Bagnaia’s crash out of the lead at Misano ended the Ducati rider's admittedly slim hopes of winning the title, but a victory there married to the fifth place Quartararo would have scored would have slashed the Yamaha runner’s points lead to 38. With Bagnaia dominating in Portugal last Sunday and Quartararo not finishing, the Ducati rider would have trailed the Frenchman by just 13 heading to the finale in Valencia.

Bagnaia, after a near-perfect jaunt to a 2.4-second victory over a rejuvenated Joan Mir on the Suzuki, remained pragmatic in his outlook when Autosport asked if he’d pondered such a reality.

“I felt like today was perfect for me,” he beamed. “We have to be realistic and I’m a really optimistic guy and I’m always thinking on better things. But this is life and it’s correct that it is like this.”

He noted in an earlier question: “I think that we didn’t lose the championship in Misano because I lost a lot of points before, and I started to be so competitive after some races. For sure it’s a really great base for next year. Also, we have worked so hard and so well with our bike. So, for next year we have a really great base.”

Bagnaia also pointed out Quartararo would have been unlikely to have made the mistake he did when he slid off his Yamaha at the Turn 5 hairpin on lap 21 of the shortened 23-lap grand prix (which was red-flagged on lap 24 when Tech3’s Iker Lecuona collided with KTM counterpart Miguel Oliveira) had the championship still been alive and kicking in Portugal.

Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Perhaps, but Quartararo was fortunate he’d already sealed the deal at Misano because the Algarve GP really exposed the major weakness Yamaha has been carrying for some time now and which could ultimately threaten his title defence in a season he is already predicting to be difficult.

It’s no secret that the Yamaha's greatest fault is its lack of top speed. Yamaha’s philosophy with its engine has always been to run an inline four cylinder engine as opposed to the more powerful – but a bit bulkier – V4s which power the Ducati. The nature of the inline four allows Yamaha – and by extension Suzuki, who runs the same configuration – to better sculpt the chassis around it, which is where its famed agility and corner handling comes from.

Motorsport is built on compromises, so adding more power could detract from handling, and so on. Yamaha has generally focused on the handling of the bike over brute power, something three-time 500cc world champion and MotoGP legend Wayne Rainey once told this writer was prominent even in his day; he said at the old Hockenheim, the YZR500 would be ceding upwards of 20km/h to the Honda.

Quartararo was strong throughout practice at the Algarve GP, the Frenchman admitting for the first time in his career he was riding without any pressure – a neat side-effect of winning the world championship before the season is out. With Bagnaia pining for a proper battle between the pair, that looked likely. But qualifying derailed Quartararo’s weekend and ultimately set up the fall that would take him out of the race.

"When I crashed, I was just like ‘let’s see what happens’. I was on the limit and I couldn’t make the corner, but I know if I waited I would have been overtaken by the others and I just gave it a try" Fabio Quartararo

A set-up change, which he said normally works, this time didn’t have the desired effect and left him with “weird feelings” on his M1 on a flying lap. He qualified seventh as a result, with Bagnaia scorching to a fifth-straight pole with a new lap record. Troublingly for Quartararo, Bagnaia headed team-mate Jack Miller, while Pramac duo Jorge Martin and Johann Zarco were fourth and fifth. One Ducati ahead is bad enough if you’re a Yamaha rider. But four was probably his worst nightmare.

Dropping a place off the start, Quartararo was up to sixth on lap two when Lecuona and Honda’s Pol Espargaro ran wide at Turn 1. But then Quartararo found himself behind Martin and would spend much of his afternoon stuck behind the Pramac Ducati.

Zarco topped the speed traps in the race with 351.7km/h, while Quartararo’s best was 343.9km/h. 11 of Quartararo’s 20 full laps were quicker than Martin’s, and he was generally very close - but there was absolutely nothing Quartararo could do to counter the Ducati's superior top speed. When Quartararo did find a way past, he made a mistake at Turn 13 on lap 12 and lost the place again. That is very indicative of the effort a Yamaha rider must exert to beat a Ducati.

Quartararo got stuck behind Martin, then crashed trying something to make up for the speed deficit he faced on the straights

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

The problem is consequential: the M1 can’t run its normal sweeping lines because Ducatis don’t handle in the same way, therefore a Yamaha rider loses time, while also suffering with a rise in front tyre pressure. It then doesn’t have the power to outdrag the Ducati, so therefore the rider must take even more risks to make something happen. Quartararo’s crash was ultimately because he tried to turn a bit quicker at Turn 5 on the brakes and tucked the front, having adopted a ‘suck it and see’ approach to his problem.

“I remember [in April] he [Bagnaia] started P11 and to overtake was not an issue,” Quartararo recalled. “But today I stayed 15 laps behind Martin, even if he was riding one second slower. I couldn’t overtake. For me, the grip was much better. When we are before Moto2 [on the schedule] it’s better, but to be honest we know that we are too far behind with the speed that we have when we miss the qualifying.

“I was just pushing on the limit, I was making a lot of mistakes. The one of the crash, I was braking way too late and I tried to turn. So, I know why I crashed, but it’s really a shame we have this kind of difficulty because the bike is so good to ride.

“But with this speed, you can’t make any mistakes. When I crashed, I was just like, ‘let’s see what happens’. I was on the limit and I couldn’t make the corner, but I know if I waited I would have been overtaken by the others and I just gave it a try.”

The problems a Yamaha rider faces when put into battle against Ducatis puts the emphasis on qualifying ahead of them - which is an area Quartararo has excelled at. In 2021, he’s scored five poles and tallied up nine other front row starts. So it’s not often he drops the ball, but when circumstances intervene it tips his weekend on its head – as was the case at Misano, when the Yamaha’s struggles in dodgy conditions left him 15th on the grid, though he was able to rise to fourth in the race.

Having won three races this year, scored five other podiums and registered six poles, there’s little doubt in anyone’s mind that Bagnaia is going to be the biggest threat, alongside Marc Marquez, to Quartararo’s crown. But the Algarve race was another reminder of just where Yamaha has to focus over the winter on its 2022 bike.

When asked by Autosport if he hoped the Algarve GP acted as a wake-up call for Yamaha in terms of resolving its power deficit, Quartararo’s frustrations did creep forward: “Yes, and also at the end during the year you can bring new chassis. You can have an evolution at the Jerez test, at Misano test, Barcelona test.

Quartararo has called on Yamaha to make sweeping changes for 2022

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

“But you can’t have an evolution of the engine, so I think they should push so much on the engine. To be honest, for the future, it’s not going to be easy.”

The future he talks about is one, as mentioned, that will feature an all-out assault on his crown from formidable opponents in Bagnaia on a Ducati now pretty much MotoGP’s all-rounder package, and a fully recovered Marquez on a radically revised Honda that HRC hopes finally rights the wrongs of its previous challengers.

But the future also holds the reality of the MotoGP grid featuring eight Ducatis – five factory-spec bikes for Bagnaia, Miller, Martin, Zarco and Luca Marini, and three 2021-spec Desmosedicis for Enea Bastianini, Marco Bezzecchi and Fabio Di Giannantonio.

The task at hand, then, for Yamaha is enormous and one is hard to predict just how it will manage, given engine upgrades in recent years have failed to spark much enthusiasm from its riders.

With eight Ducatis on the grid next year, improvements to the engine are taking on an increased urgency

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images