Quartararo: No more changes, we’ll stick with 2021 Yamaha settings

After again failing to make Qualifying 2 - and having discarded the chassis, exhaust and aero parts from the Jerez test - the former world champion revealed the 2021 settings were fitted to his factory Yamaha from the French Sprint race onwards:

“I'm feeling a little bit better, but still not feeling super great. But much better than everything we have tried,” he said.

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Quartararo crashed out of eighth in the Sprint before bringing his M1 home in seventh place, after multiple accidents ahead, in the grand prix.

“I think the plan now - and this is what we’ve decided with our crew - is that from the beginning of the year we have been trying thousands of things, of settings on the bike.

“And now we decide to just go with the 2021 setting and I will need to adapt to any problems and we'll see.

“But we’ve tried a lot of things on the bike and the best we had is always to bring the base of two years ago.

“So we decide to keep [the bike] like that and that's it.”

Quartararo, leading the world championship at this stage last year, has only taken one podium this season and is 45 points from title leader Francesco Bagnaia.

“Right now we are way too far [to think about the title] but I feel disappointed in one way that I could have managed to get really better results [here],” he said.

“Because, at the end, what is true is that today and yesterday, even in the Sprint, my pace was not so bad.”

Quartararo has identified qualifying speed and overtaking difficulties as his main issues.

He explained that the upgraded 2023 engine has perhaps made the bike more aggressive, and difficult to turn, but still doesn't have enough power to run the high downforce of rival machines.

"It looks like we got some more power but we lose much more in riding," he said earlier in the weekend. “I never had a bike this aggressive, and no turning.

“We tried an exhaust, which was not working. Chassis is not working. Aero is not working. Electronics is not working. Maybe one setting that we tried with Öhlins was a little bit better.

“But from the [Jerez] test, the new things that we tried were useless.”

Team-mate Franco Morbidelli finished 13th and 10th in the Le Mans races.