How Quartararo is evoking an absent MotoGP great in 2022

Even last year with essentially one fully functioning arm, Marc Marquez was expected to stand on top of the podium at the German Grand Prix. He had done every year in MotoGP from his debut in 2013 (no race was held in 2020 due to COVID), while no manufacturer other than Honda had taken a Sachsenring victory since Valentino Rossi in 2009 on the Yamaha.

Despite Marquez’s continued absence through a fourth major operation on his badly broken right arm – which has gone well and his recovery is heading in the right direction – Honda’s decline in Germany last weekend was impossible to predict.

With LCR duo Alex Marquez retiring with a technical issue and Takaaki Nakagami crashing out, Pol Espargaro pulling out with rib pain and team-mate Stefan Bradl 16th after his RC213V burned his right foot, Honda emerged from the German GP with no points. It marked the first time since it boycotted the 1982 French Grand Prix that Honda didn’t score in a race.

It is a tragic indictment of the disarray Honda has found itself in without its talismanic leader at full fitness.

But if there were echoes of a pointless past for Honda at the back of the grid, there were echoes of its prior fortunes at the front as Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo strengthened his position at the head of the championship with another emphatic win.

Quartararo was hailed as the next Marquez when he stormed into the world championship aged 15 back in 2015 in Moto3, only for his career to almost come to an ignominious standstill as he failed to live up to his reputation.

Quartararo was hailed as the next Marquez when he stormed into the world championship aged 15 back in 2015 in Moto3

While much can be questioned in the way RNF Racing does business, in its former guise as Petronas SRT, its management’s belief that Quartararo had the potential to become a new MotoGP great must forever be applauded.

As the 2022 MotoGP season hit the halfway point last Sunday at the German GP, Quartararo looks well on his way to a second world championship after taking a 34-point lead in the standings after a bruising race for his rivals.

Nearest title threat Aleix Espargaro battled to a distant fourth, 9.1s from Quartararo, as he suffered a front tyre vibration. Enea Bastianini, thrice a winner in 2022, was 21.6s adrift in 10th after a disappointing weekend. And Francesco Bagnaia, winner at Jerez and Mugello and in utterly fine form all weekend at the Sachsenring, crashed out at Turn 1 at the start of the fourth lap while chasing Quartararo.

"In the race, the conditions were totally different and from the beginning I was a little bit scared because I was using the tyre a little bit more than expected to ride fast"  Fabio Quartararo

A dejected Bagnaia was at a loss to explain why the rear of his Ducati came round on him in the way that it did. Any explanation, though, cannot hide the fact that it was a crash that has ultimately proved fatal to his title hopes. Now 91 points behind Quartararo, any recovery of that gap seems like a bridge too far.

But what will sting more is that Quartararo was put into a dominant position when he shouldn’t have been. The Yamaha rider didn’t like the hard rear tyre in practice, which was the choice for all but two on the grid for Sunday’s sweltering race as track temperatures exceeded 50 degrees Celsius, and so opted for the medium instead.

It gave him a grip advantage at the start, but would require much more nurturing to be able to get him to the finish in one piece. And Quartararo himself later admitted that he pushed too hard early on.

“We took a choice on the rear tyre, the medium, that was really risky and in the race we were lucky because it dropped much more than I expected,” he said. “In the race, the conditions were totally different and from the beginning I was a little bit scared because I was using the tyre a little bit more than expected to ride fast.”

Quartararo’s 2022 season is following trends were all too familiar in Marquez’s pre-injury golden days, such as 2019

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

It stands to reason that Bagnaia’s hard tyre would have given him a pace advantage in the second half of the race and brought Quartararo back to him when he hit his “disaster” point with his medium rear tyre in the closing six laps.

Alas, Bagnaia’s crash – when he was half a second behind Quartararo – opened up a 1.2s gulf between Quartararo and new second-placed man Johann Zarco. With Espargaro struggling to hold onto third behind and Bastianini nowhere, Quartararo was free to stage manage his way to his third win of a season he is now looking very likely to conquer.

So, while Marc Marquez was a notable absentee, Quartararo’s display very much echoed that of the six-time MotoGP world champion. And in general, Quartararo’s 2022 season is following trends were all too familiar in Marquez’s pre-injury golden days.

More often than not, the Honda machinery Marquez was on wasn’t capable of domination. But his supreme unity with his bike and the errors of his rivals allowed him to take commanding early championship leads in 2016, 2018 and 2019. It was the perfect combination of striking when conditions were perfect and salvaging strongly on the bad days to inflict maximum damage.

Quartararo is very much doing that in 2022. His Yamaha package is by no means terrible, but its power deficiency and the traction problems he feels this can create mean it is not the all-rounded package the Ducati is, or even the Aprilia.

Struggling early season to ninth, eighth and seventh in Qatar, Argentina and Austin, with a second at round two in the wet Indonesian GP the outlying result, Quartararo has now kicked into a real purple patch.

Finishing second at Jerez, Quartararo took fourth in France (staying mounted to capitalise on several crashes ahead), second at Mugello and a dominant victory in Barcelona – two tracks the Yamaha’s problems were expected to affect him the most – to add to his Germany success.

Quartararo has so far outperformed pre-season title rival favourite Francesco Bagnaia

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

And at each of those races, chief title rivals all had problems. In Spain, Espargaro got stuck behind Jack Miller and Marc Marquez for too long fighting for third to make a dent in the lead battle. In France Bagnaia crashed out battling Bastianini for the win. In Italy Bastianini crashed out. In Barcelona Bagnaia was wiped out at the first corner, while Bastianini crashed and Espargaro dropped from second to fifth when he miscounted how many laps were left in the race.

“This is one more time that Fabio is demonstrating that he is more complete than me,” Bagnaia said following his crash, before making a pertinent point about Quartararo’s level at the moment in 2022 when asked if he was surprised Quartararo pushed as much as he did in the German GP. “He is always on top and he never does a mistake. For sure his bike maybe helps him to make less mistakes, I don’t know. If I’m looking at this bike, and not only just his bike, the mix, the combination of them is that they are strong in the time attack, strong on the pace, strong in the race. He never did a mistake, so he’s more complete for that [reason] because I have had four zero [scores] this year.

“He is a world champion; he is one of the greatest riders ever. So, for sure he wants to win like Marquez was trying to win every race, Valentino, Casey. So, the greatest riders try to do that.”

"He never did a mistake, so he’s more complete for that [reason] because I have had four zero [scores] this year" Francesco Bagnaia

Quartararo is now clearly riding better than ever in MotoGP and has come through one of the most difficult phases of his season cemented as the title favourite.

While bogey tracks for the Yamaha are still to come in the likes of Red Bull Ring, Aragon, Motegi and Sepang, he has proven he is equipped to manage those in the best way, while his rivals have proven they have work to do still to get on his level.

Could Quartararo repeat his 2021 championship win this season?

Photo by: Yamaha