After a poor performance in Sunday’s French Grand Prix, defending title holder Fabio Quartararo admits he is “by no means the favourite” for the 2022 MotoGP championship.
The Yamaha racer was anticipated to compete for the win at Le Mans on Sunday after setting the fastest average sppeed throughout the weekend’s practise sessions.
However, he had a bad start from fourth on the grid and battled to pass, slipping to eighth at one point before recovering to sixth — thanks to many accidents in front of him.
Despite being four points ahead of Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro in the title, Quartararo believes he cannot be regarded a favourite for the championship because he cannot risk creating any errors on the 2022 Yamaha.
“No, I’m not the favourite by far,” he said when asked if he thought he was still the leading title contender.
“The only thing I can do is make no mistakes. If I make no mistakes I can be there, because our pace in every GP we go – apart from a few like Austin and Qatar – looking at the pace of Jerez, with Pecco [Bagnaia] we were the fastest.
“Here in the pace, for me I was the fastest. But as soon as you make a small mistake, you are gone.
“I remember one race last year when Pecco started one race in Portimao in P11, he was able to make overtakes.
“In the second race I was in the same situation in P6, and I stayed in P6. I don’t know what I can do, to be honest, because I am pushing myself to the limit.
“I am on the limit everywhere. But I cannot even try.
“This is the most frustrating thing. You are in the last lap, and even if you are one centimetre behind they accelerate and pull away.
“And then you lose one tenth. This is why I don’t feel the favourite this year.”
Quartararo went on to say that top four at Le Mans was not his “true” place, and that he was fortunate to see both Suzuki racers and long-time leader Bagnaia fall out of good finishes.
“I don’t feel happy about my race at all,” he added.
“I had three crashes in front of me, I cannot be happy about the race because my real position is not fourth – it’s much further back.
“And it’s not because of the pace, because if you check in all of the practices we had the best pace.
“But then you are in a position where you don’t have a clear track or you are not able to overtake, then it’s finished.
“And this is why I was not even angry because I’ve got a little bit used already about that.
“What is sure, I give always 100%, but I gave everything today and I had one moment where I almost lost the front at the last corner, Aleix took a half-second gap and in five corners I was already behind. So, in terms of speed I was fast.”
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