Fabio Quartararo felt “someone hit me on the inside… it was the head of Jack Miller”

Fa�𝔉�bio Quartararo reacts to worrying crash in Sepang

Fabio Quartararo
Fabio Quartararo

Fab♛io Quartararo scored a solid sixth-place finish in the MotoGP Malaysian Grand Prix, but not before he’d been involved in the crash with Jac🎀k Miller on lap one that brought out the red flag.

Quartararo was hit on the rear wheel of his Yamaha YZR-M1 by Miller’s head 💟as th🎶e KTM rider fell following contact with Brad Binder at the first turn.

“I didn’t even see what 🎶happened,” Quartararo said after the racꦏe.

“I just feel like someone hit me on the inside, and then felt like a lock ꦕ— was the head of Jack [Miller] — so I didn’t know how he was.

“I saw him just before in the pa😼ddock so I’m really happy for him to be fine because it was a really scary one.”

𝔍No further action was taken by the stewar♔ds after they investigated.

Quartararo forced to race second bike

Quartararo was happy with his resta🎶rted race, though, as he scored another top-six finish for what seems 🅷to be an improving Yamaha team.

“🌟I think we can be happy with the movement we had during all the race, with a front tyre that was not really the one t༺hat we liked,” Quartararo said, having had to switch front and rear tyres after the start.

“Then, we started with a rear tyre that was quite u🥀sed — had five laps,🅠 unfortunately.

“I think the 🎃result was quite okay and we can be happy with the result we managed to get.”

Because of Quartararo’s involvement in the crash with Mi🃏ller, he had to race his number two bike at the restꦛart.

It took a while to change the settings in Quartararo’s second bike from the wet setup 🥀that was prepꦇared in anticipation of a possible flag-to-flag race. The engine in the spare bike was older, too, both in terms of mileage and specification, Quartararo having suffered a problem on a new-specification engine on Friday.

“They could make it [the second🧔 bike] exactly [like the number one bike], but our setting for wet condition is completely different, so they had to change everything,” he said.

“It ᩚᩚᩚ𝓰ᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚtakes 15–20 minutes. The engine was slower because it was more used.

“But we have to understand that in the end i🍌t was the spare bike for all the weekend, like we broke one engine on the Friday so this one was really♋ old, and I think we managed to get it pretty [good].”

With Sepang drawing a close to the final flyaway portion of the 2024 MotoGP season, Quartararo reflected on them po♉sitively.

“I think we can take p🅰ositives from all the circuits,” he said.

“Japan was one of the weakest ones, but we go✅ from Q1 to Q2, and then in Australia the pace was great, in Mandalika, in Thailand we were fast in the wet and dry, here also. We qualified P6 in Thailand, P8 here.

“We can be happy about this end of the season, ♊and hopefully we can see the difference from where we have been in Barcelona in the summer, and now in the last races we made a step.”

Read More