**”Heat Struggles Cost Quartararo and Yamaha Precious Positions at Mandalika MotoGP”**

"Speedy" Fabio Quartararo showed impressive pace today, however…

Monster Yamaha racers suffer setbacks due to early race difficulties at Mandalika.

In the first laps of Sunday’s Indonesian MotoGP, Fabio Quartararo reduced his gap to race winner Jorge Martin by half, from 13.2 seconds.

The Yamaha rider had difficulty warming up the rear tire, which resulted in him trailing Martin by 6.7 seconds after the first four laps.

The Frenchman fell from his season-best sixth position on the grid to 13th place, even though four riders crashed in front of him.

After gaining momentum, Quartararo advanced to match his best performance of the season with a seventh-place finish, trailing Martin by just 0.8 seconds over the last four laps.

Quartararo believed that if he hadn't faced an initial setback, he could have competed against Francesco Bagnaia, Franco Morbidelli, and Marco Bezzecchi for the last spot on the podium.

Quartararo explained that he dropped 7-8 places during the initial laps because it consistently took them over 4-5 laps to get the rear medium tire up to temperature throughout the weekend.

"I was quick, but the issue was getting the tire up to temperature. Once that was sorted, I matched Bezzecchi's speed pretty closely."

"We lost six seconds in the initial laps and ended up in 13th place. Though we're still not as fast as the others, today we were much closer to Morbidelli and Bagnaia."

"Beyond our current standing, the key focus now should be on our speed of progress."

Following difficulties with passing during the Sprint, changing from a soft to a hard front tire for the main race allowed me to brake much later and execute some overtakes. Additionally, a few riders in front made minor errors.

This enabled Quartararo to cross the finish line in seventh position among 12 riders who completed the race, matching his season-best result for the third consecutive time.

Despite losing speed early on, Quartararo was significantly nearer to winning compared to his performances in the earlier Emilia Romagna race, where he was 20.9 seconds behind, and the San Marino race, where he finished 17.6 seconds back.

"We had the pace today, but there's still a lot missing for us to be fully satisfied," stated the 2021 world champion. He continued, "However, today went pretty well… We managed to put in some good laps."

Fabio Quartararo’s fastest lap was 0.277 seconds behind Enea Bastianini’s top time of the race.

Alex Rins: "This was among my most difficult races."

Alex Rins, who is teammates with Takaaki Nakagami, initially ended the race in twelfth place. However, he was elevated to eleventh position after Nakagami received a penalty for tyre pressure violations post-race.

Rins faced difficulties warming up his rear tyre and, following Joan Mir's pass, stayed at the back of the pack from lap 6 all the way to the finish on lap 27.

Rins admitted, "I struggled a lot to get the tyre up to temperature. On the first lap, we lost several positions because I entered turn 7 without using the throttle and completely lost control of the rear."

"We anticipated that getting the rear tire to the right temperature would be challenging, but this turned out to be more difficult than we had imagined. I'm feeling somewhat sad and frustrated because, although we began Friday on a positive note, we couldn't make the progress I had hoped for."

"Saturday was really challenging, and today was one of the hardest races I've ever experienced in the world championship – I came in last place! We need to investigate what went wrong and review the details."

"Certainly, this isn't where I aim to be. However, I'm excited for the upcoming race, which fortunately is happening next week."

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