Fabio Quartararo has “no regrets” about missing out on the MotoGP championship title after finishing fourth in the Valencia race.
The Monster Energy Yamaha rider needed to win the race to have any hope and, even then, was relying on Francesco Bagnaia doing no better than 15th at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo.
Matters got worse when Bagnaia got ahead of him after they made contact on Lap 2, the Italian taking advantage of the gap created when his Ducati Lenovo team-mate Jack Miller went down the inside of the #20 Yamaha at Turn 2.
Asked whether he could still win the race after those battles, Quartararo said, “No, unfortunately not.
“We made a great pace, we recover a little bit with the front, but with Jack, he brakes in Turn 2, we go off wide.
“I push when I have the touch with Pecco [Bagnaia], I wanted to really push myself to the maximum. On that lap I was on the limit, basically all the race on the limit.
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“But I have no regrets because I give my 100 percent today and when you lose the title like that at the end, you always need to find the positive, even if right now it’s 99 percent of negative.
“The one percent positive is, the next four months that I need to wait for the first race, I will be [in] even more anger of training hard, preparing myself better and fight harder in 2023.”
The comments are perhaps noteworthy also because, with half of the year’s 20 races complete, the Frenchman had enjoyed a 91-point advantage over Bagnaia before the latter stormed back into contention with four straight wins.
According to Quartararo, he also struggled with his front tyre in the warmer than expected conditions in Valencia, notwithstanding that every rider chose the hard Michelin slick on the front.
“It was not a problem of tyre pressure; it was just a problem of basically tyre compound too soft,” he explained.
“Luckily, this year we had at least one stop harder on left, but they are bringing tyres way too soft in this track and also I think because every year is more hot at this track; today it’s 26, 27 degrees.
“So that’s why also we are little bit too soft and we are always using super hard tyres. That’s the thing.”
With Bagnaia taking the chequered flag in ninth on a Desmosedici left damaged from the clash with ‘El Diablo’, the difference between the two at season’s end was 17 points or 0.68 races.
The post-season test takes place at the same circuit on Tuesday.
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