Fabio Quartararo admits he faces an uphill battle to win the 2022 MotoGP championship after crashing out of the Australia race.
For the first time since Round 4, at the Circuit of The Americas, Quartararo finished the weekend without the championship lead after his DNF and Francesco Bagnaia’s podium at Phillip Island.
The Frenchman started the weekend Down Under with just a two-point margin and looked vulnerable when he somehow qualified fifth with an effort which surprised even his own Monster Energy Yamaha team, while Bagnaia got himself onto the front row.
With Bagnaia finishing third, the Ducati rider is now 14 points up in the standings, and need only finish second and third in the remaining two races this year to at least win the title on a countback.
“Now we need to turn the page and we only have one job and it’s trying to win,” said Quartararo, the 2021 champion.
“It’s going to be the toughest job of my career, but I’m ready to fight for it.”
Remarkably, Quartararo had been 91 points up on Bagnaia after the Italian crashed out of the Sachsenring race and slipped to sixth in the standings, meaning the turnaround is 105 points in just eight rounds.
‘El Diablo’ was running seventh when he had an off at Phillip Island’s Turn 4, a mistake which cost him 15 positions.
“I braked, the back of the bike lifted and I had [Luca] Marini in front so I had to go wide,” he explained.
“That was my mistake and it was not easy to recover.”
Quartararo had not long worked his way back into the points, which are paid as low as 15th, when he tucked the front of his YZR-M1 at Southern Loop.
“I think I overtook four to five riders, but I was also trying to save the tyres,” he recalled.
“Then I pushed way too much in the entry; it was not a big difference in the corner speed but just out of 1 [Doohan Corner, Turn 1] I was much faster than I used to be.”
The next round of the season, at Malaysia’s Sepang, starts this Friday.
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