How MotoGP’s V4s are ganging up on Quartararo

MotoGP

Fabio Quartararo is coming under increasing pressure from MotoGP’s Italian V4s. So what are his chances at the last eight races? And why has Yamaha hired an Italian Formula 1 engine designer?

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Quartararo (#20] surrounded by Aprilia, Ducati, Honda and KTM V4s at Red Bull Ring last August

Ducati

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Some of us predicted it before the start of the season – Fabio Quartararo will struggle to retain his MotoGP crown in the face of an Italian V4 onslaught: eight Ducati Desmosedicis and two Aprilia RS-GPs.

The 23-year-old Frenchman has been riding out of his skin this year, even more so than last, achieving results that shouldn’t be possible (just look at what his fellow Yamaha riders are doing) to lead the championship, but the signs are that the V4 threat from Aprilia is growing. And Quartararo knows it.

“When we arrive at a track on Friday we are fast, because our bike is really similar to previous years,” he said after finishing a grim eighth last time out at Silverstone, thanks in part to a long-lap penalty. “But the more races they do the more they understand their bikes.”

Quartararo was caught in the pack at Silverstone, just where he doesn’t want to be, because in that situation he can’t use his inline-four YZR-M1’s superior corner speed and because his tyres overheat.

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Red Bull Ring’s new right/left chicane, installed just before the track’s former Turn Two, which may help or hinder Quartararo this weekend.

Red Bull Ring

“The rear tyre got so hot, plus I ride totally different to the others, so overtaking was a nightmare,” he added at Silverstone.

At least he got a good look at the mostly V4 opposition, including Aleix Espargaró’s Aprilia, currently 22 points behind him.

“They have top speed, acceleration, rear grip… a lot of things that we don’t have. But I prefer not to talk too much about this. The main thing for us is to stay focused and not to look at our negative points, because we can’t improve them this year.”

This has been Quartararo’s psyche for the last two seasons: make the most of it when things go your way and limit the damage when they don’t, because throwing your toys out of the pram doesn’t get you any championship points.

This week MotoGP moves to Red Bull Ring, a V4-friendly drag strip, where last year Quartararo somehow managed to finish third, winning a battle with the Ducatis of Johann Zarco and Jack Miller, who crashed trying to stay with him.

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Quartararo fought Márquez for the win last time at Buriram, in 2019. This year he’ll have the much-improved Aprilia and Ducati to deal with

Petronas SRT

Crunching some recent top-speed numbers suggests that he may not be out of the podium fight on Sunday either. This year at COTA, Le Mans and Mugello – circuits that also feature slow-ish corners that lead onto fast straights – Yamaha has slightly reduced the M1’s top-speed deficit compared to last season.

And then there’s the question mark of the new chicane, installed before the track’s super-fast former Turn 2, to improve safety on the way into the former Turn 3. Will this benefit or damage Quartararo’s chances?

The right/left chicane is a dead-stop chicane, a bit like the chicane that leads onto Aragon’s back straight. So it’s not somewhere he’ll be able to really exploit his corner-speed advantage. Also, the chicane adds an extra braking and acceleration zone, where V4s are traditional stronger. Therefore, in theory at least, this could be bad for the Yamaha, but the science of motorcycle racing is a strange business, so you never know till you get there.

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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.

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Quartararo after failing to make the front row at Silverstone – he was unhappy because he needs a front-row start to challenge for the win

Yamaha

“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.

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Former Ferrari F1 engine designer Fabio Marmorini is already working to find more horsepower from Yamaha’s M1 for 2023

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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.

And finally Valencia. Last year’s Valencia result proved how much the Ducati has come on in the last couple of seasons. The factory scored its first-ever podium lock-out; and the last time a Ducati had won there in the dry was in 2008, with Casey Stoner on board.

Which brings us to next season.

In 2023 there will be just two Yamahas on the 22-bike grid, the fewest since 1984, when Yamaha ran Eddie Lawson and Virginio Ferrari on YZR500s. This is not good, because it means less data and less information during testing, practice and races.

And, following the loss of Suzuki’s factory team and Yamaha’s independent team, the two M1s will be the only inline-fours, an endangered species up against 20 V4s.

V4s are taking over, even though inline-fours have won the last two titles. For various reasons you can get more power out of a V4 engine, plus the bikes are better at braking deep into corners, so they tend to be better in battles, which is why the only way Quartararo can usually win is when he’s alone out front, carving his inline-four lines.

Yamaha therefore faces a huge a challenge if it’s to stay competitive.

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So far Morbidelli hasn’t been able to get close to Quartararo’s pace but he looks set to stay at Yamaha in 2023

Yamaha

The company has already made a dramatic move to increase horsepower, hiring former Ferrari and Toyota Formula 1 engine designer Luca Marmorini at the start of this year to get more power out of the M1. This is another sign of MotoGP’s western technology drift, from Japan to Europe.

F1 engineers don’t have a great reputation in MotoGP, because the technical demands of F1 and MotoGP are so different. F1 cars have huge grip, MotoGP bikes have very little grip, so F1 engine design is mostly about peak power, while MotoGP engine design is mostly about part-throttle performance.

Consider Aprilia’s first four-stroke MotoGP bike, the RS Cube, which had its engine designed by legendary F1 engineering outfit Cosworth. The engine was basically three cylinders from a ten-cylinder three-litre F1 engine, so it had a very light crankshaft. This is bad on a motorcycle, because the less engine inertia the more easily the rear tyre loses traction and spins.

However, Marmorini already has MotoGP experience. He spent a couple of years as a consultant to Aprilia, working on the company’s old and new RS-GP engines, playing an important role in cylinder-head and combustion-chamber design, which are two highlights of the current RS-GP engine, so he knows what’s required.

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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.

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Will Morbidelli be able to find his form at the end of this season or next?

Yamaha

“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.