Photo: Fabio Quartararo / Twitter
Reigning MotoGP world champion Fabio Quartararo has been quite critical of his team’s engines in recent years, as Yamaha has frequently been the slowest bike through various speed traps. However, last week he sampled his bike’s engine for next year (in prototype form) and called it a “big improvement.”
The team debuted its 2023 engine at Misano recently, where the bike maxed out at 298.3 kph (185.3 mph), matching Aprilia’s pace. The Yamaha was also less than 2 kph (1.24 mph) shy of Jorge Martin’s Ducati, which was clocked at 300 kph (186 mph).
Even though the top speed run was done in a slipstream, Quartararo said that he was still very encouraged by the average speed, reports Motorsport.
“Happy we got confirmed the engine was a big improvement,” said the champ. “This morning I took a good slipstream behind Franco [Morbidelli] and top speed was really good. I’m really happy, we work on the electronics this morning because the character of the engine is slightly different.”
“Now it’s difficult to know something. I made a 1m31.3s with a tire of 26 laps, at the end you can put a new tire and you don’t even feel it. But really happy, for the first test with a prototype I’ve made a really good pace and it looks good. 298 kph was on the slipstream, but the average we did over the day was also good.”
While there’s still some work to be done on this new engine, Quartararo said that he doesn’t know if there’s more performance left on the table, adding that the overall character of the power unit didn’t change significantly.
“We will still have tests to do and hopefully more top speed [to find]. The character changed a bit but I’m not lost. Of course, we still need to work a little bit more on the first part of acceleration. The bike is a bit more lazy than aggressive,” he concluded.
Even though the top speed run was done in a slipstream, Quartararo said that he was still very encouraged by the average speed, reports Motorsport.
“Happy we got confirmed the engine was a big improvement,” said the champ. “This morning I took a good slipstream behind Franco [Morbidelli] and top speed was really good. I’m really happy, we work on the electronics this morning because the character of the engine is slightly different.”
“Now it’s difficult to know something. I made a 1m31.3s with a tire of 26 laps, at the end you can put a new tire and you don’t even feel it. But really happy, for the first test with a prototype I’ve made a really good pace and it looks good. 298 kph was on the slipstream, but the average we did over the day was also good.”
While there’s still some work to be done on this new engine, Quartararo said that he doesn’t know if there’s more performance left on the table, adding that the overall character of the power unit didn’t change significantly.
“We will still have tests to do and hopefully more top speed [to find]. The character changed a bit but I’m not lost. Of course, we still need to work a little bit more on the first part of acceleration. The bike is a bit more lazy than aggressive,” he concluded.
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