Fabio Quartararo offers hope for Yamaha: “We know where we can improve”

Fabio Quartararo believes Yamaha are heading in the right direction despite a tough German MotoGP at Sachsenring.

The scene of his last MotoGP win in 2022, Quartararo was 11th come the end of Sunday’s 30-lap race.

But despite missing out on a top ten result, the 2021 world champion saw plenty of positives heading into the second part of the year.

Quartararo said: “It was a tough GP, but today went much better than expected. We miss a lot in the beginning with new tyres, but I finished with more or less the same distance to the winner as I did in yesterday's Sprint, so I think that's pretty good.

“We know where we can improve. I think that the second part of the season will be better, and I think that we will improve.

“We made progress since the start of the year. We're working hard, and you can't tell by the results yet, but we are on our way, and hopefully you can see the steps we made soon.”

19th on his return to MotoGP, Remy Gardner was impressive in his stand-in appearance for Alex Rins.

After making changes from the sprint race, Gardner felt immediate improvements in warm-up, which carried into the grand prix.

“We made a setting change to improve my feeling with the bike,” said Gardner. “I felt a difference in Warm Up, and I thought we could have a pretty good Race.

“The pace until lap 10 was really good. I was fighting with Zarco and Bradl, trying to hunt down Mir, and I was in front of Bradl for 8-9 laps, which was good.

“I didn't know how to manage the tyre drop of the rear tyre over the last 10 laps, but that's all down to experience.

“Still, if you compare my pace with the medium rear between yesterday's Sprint and today's Race, today's pace is much better.

“Hopefully I gave some good feedback and a different point of view, and hopefully Yamaha can take some positives from that.”