Friday morning's Practice 1 session at the IndianOil Grand Prix of India saw 2021 World Champion Fabio Quartararo (Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP™) lose valuable track time as he was forced to nurse his Yamaha M1 back to pitlane not once, but twice whilst trying to acquaint himself with the Buddh International Circuit.
Following the session Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP™ team manager Massimo Meregalli revealed what the issues were with Frenchman's machine.
"Fabio had problems on both bikes. It was the transmission. It was strange and for safety reasons, we decided to stop Franky. So we can understand where the problem is coming from. It cost us a lot of time on track, the second session is long and we will try to do all the work we couldn't do this morning. It's a pity because it's a new circuit, like this one which I really like but it is long and not easy to learn, what we lost this morning I think is very important.”
The Yamaha team boss also shed light on the arrival of Yamaha's new upgraded engine which was tested in Misano, explaining that it may take longer than expected. "There is no different point of view, it was just a matter of communication. That was our mistake because we didn’t inform him of our expectations. What we gained from the Test is what we expected. The engine was quite a new one with a different character. I was satisfied because we didn’t have any issues, and basically, we confirmed what the expectations were, knowing we were already working on two different specs. One will be in Valencia, and the other one in Malaysia.”