Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP |News details:Quartararo Sprints to Ninth on San Marino Saturday

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Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP's Fabio Quartararo was pushing in this afternoon's Gran Premio di San Marino e della Riviera di Rimini Sprint, starting from P10 on the grid. Holding off Alex Marquez whilst at the same time stalking Jack Miller, he finished in 9th place. After a few difficult early laps setting out from P20, Álex Rins pushed on and took 19th place.

Misano Adriatico (Italy), 7th September 2024

Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP Team's Fabio Quartararo was multitasking in today's 13-lap Sprint at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli. He ultimately secured 9th place in the rankings. Álex Rins had a tough Gran Premio di San Marino e della Riviera di Rimini Sprint. Falling back at the start, he had to grit his teeth and rode to 19th place across the finish line.

Quartararo started from P10 and, though battling with Alex Marquez, managed to hold the position after the first lap. A crash by Marco Bezzecchi on lap 5 saw the Frenchman move up to ninth, while the pack was starting to pull apart. El Diablo spent most of the Sprint in the rider group fighting for seventh place. He was trying to get close enough to overtake his rivals, but the Yamaha man also had to keep an eye Álex Marquez, who stayed right on his tail throughout the Sprint. Quartararo managed to keep the Spaniard at bay and took ninth place and a championship point, finishing 11.015s from first.

Rins commenced the Sprint from P20, a challenging position to be in. Sandwiched between rivals in the opening corners, he initially fell back to 22nd. But by profiting from the mistakes of other riders, it was only a matter of five laps until he was in 19th place. He managed to close the gap to Luca Marini in 18th but found no way through. Rins took the chequered flag in 19th place, 24.873s from the Sprint winner.

Today's results see Quartararo remain in 14th place in the overall standings with 52 points. Rins stays in 20th position with 15 points. Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP keep their 9th place in the team championship with 67 points, and Yamaha hold on to 4th position in the constructor's championship with 63 points.

MotoGP will be back in action tomorrow for Warm Up, held from 09:40 - 09:50 (GMT +2), and the 27-lap Race, which starts at 14:00.

Massimo Meregalli

Team Director

Starting with the positives: Fabio did a good job securing tenth place in Q2. Though we naturally want to be further up the grid, realistically this is a good starting position for us at the present time. Nevertheless, we knew the Sprint would be difficult for him and also for Álex, who was starting from P20. Both riders lost some time getting stuck behind others on the opening laps, and neither were able to overtake like they wanted. There's work to do for tomorrow, so we will make some changes based on today's data and evaluate the tweaked settings in Warm Up. It will be a long and warm Race, so physical fitness, focus, and also tyre management could play a role.

Fabio Quartararo

Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP Rider

Today I qualified in P10 and, to be honest, I was pretty happy with my lap time. I pushed like hell and made no mistakes. I feel like we did our best and, for our current situation, the lap was pretty good. During the Sprint, we didn't have enough traction on the rear, so it was sliding. I did today's Sprint race riding 'by the front tyre’ and that, unfortunately, is not my usual riding style.

Álex Rins

Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP Rider

It was a really tough Sprint race. I was struggling a bit during the entire race to overtake the rider in front of me. I was stuck behind Luca Marini. I tried to change lines, for example in corner 6 and corner 3. I tried to enter the corner fast or slower, to try to find the traction, but I couldn't find it. The pace that we showed during this weekend was much faster than what we did in the Sprint. Let's see tomorrow if, at the end of the Race with used tyres, we can overtake and have more of an advantage.