MotoGP, Quartararo convinced he will lose more than what everyone says in the long lap

Fabio Quartararo will start from the second row at Silverstone, in fourth position. Tomorrow the world champion will be forced to face a long lap penalty in the very first laps, one of the crucial phases of the race.

It's a fourth position that is not exactly a miracle, given the performances to which the Nice rider has accustomed us, but it acquires more value if you think that behind him, albeit by a few thousandths, are his chief rivals, not in optimal condition this weekend.

Tomorrow the long lap penalty will complicate everything.

“Well, it is what it is. I mean, I made one of the best laps of qualifying this year, I feel I have nothing more. We want to put more power in sometimes, but we are already on the maximum. I feel happy about my pace also in FP4, okay with the crash of Aleix and Nakagami I could not finish the lap because of the yellow flag, but I think all of our laps was on 59 and this is something really positive. The track is much better than last year and our consistency as well is much better.”

How do you consider your pace compared to that of others?

“Johann has really strong pace, I think he is the fastest. But I think our pace is to fight for the victory. Okay, the long lap penalty, we don’t know which position we will finish, but at least our pace is top.”

Compared to yesterday, how did it go today? You said it took you a while to regain your confidence and you also had problems with your shoulder.

"Yesterday the shoulder was ok, it was the camera that bothered me, so today we took it off. Physically I feel very good. Taking a break was good for me and I think we made a good step forward, I feel good!”.

Did you try to take the long lap penalty a few times, how much do you think it will make you lose in the race?

“We calculate, of course. Some people think we lose only 0.8s, but we lose much more. So at the end, it’s something that I prefer to go a little bit slower and take no risk than put myself on the limit, risk a crash or risk to make another one. It’s not one-tenth or two tenths will change my life for 20 laps.”

Both you and Espargarò and Bagnaia have a problem. You the penalty, Pecco doesn’t have the pace and Aleix has some ailments. Does anything change for the race?

"It's part of the game, even if he didn't find the right setup Bagnaia is two hundredths away from me and Aleix crashed but he too is very close".