“On the limit” Fabio Quartararo: “Better to crash from 6th than 12th”

There was a collective sigh from the almost 120,000 Le Mans fans when home hero Fabio Quartararo crashed out of a season-best sixth place in Sunday’s French MotoGP race.

The Monster Yamaha rider, using a special one-off livery, revealed the team had made a massive change to his M1 for warm-up, which he kept for the grand prix.

Quartararo slipped from eighth to tenth place in the early laps but, at the time of his accident, was nine places ahead of the next best Japanese machine, of countryman Johann Zarco (15th).

“Yes, on the limit, but I feel better to crash when I’m P6 than P12,” Quartararo told TNT sports. “So today was a good day. We were pretty fast, so hopefully we can carry on and feel that speed during the next races.

“This morning we made a massive change on the bike, it was quite positive and during the race I was running this bike and I think it was pretty good.

“Unfortunately, we crashed, but it was the first time this year that we've seen the leaders that close. So hopefully we can have more races like that.”

Quartararo set the ninth fastest race lap, 0.579s from the race best by Enea Bastianini (Ducati).

The Frenchman and team-mate Alex Rins, who finished 15th on Sunday, will now head straight for a private test at Mugello before round six of the season at Catalunya.