Mid-season report: ‘Quartararo maturing, last three races amazing’ - Meregalli

With the MotoGP summer break in full flow, Monster Energy Yamaha’s Massimo Meregalli reflects on a challenging but rewarding first half of 2022.

Defending Champion Fabio Quartararo sits 21 points clear at the top of the title standings after 11 races completed, with teammate Franky Morbidelli 147 points behind and 19th overall.

“The beginning has been difficult,” Meregalli said of the 2022 so far. “Difficult also because we were expecting something from Japan that we were not able to deliver, and I think we lost some motivation or goodness.

“But then we decided to stop thinking about what we didn’t get, and try to maximise what we had. We went to Qatar and the race anyway didn’t go as expected, also it took us a bit to understand the new aerodynamics. Then we moved to Indonesia, we had a really good result in the wet, a circumstance that we usually do not perform well in.

“But I think the switch that Fabio had was in COTA, when at the end of the race, even though we had a really big gap in top speed, he was able to fight with Marc [Marquez] until the end of the race. When he arrived in Portimao, he arrived, in my opinion, in a different way, and from there I think we maximised our package, and they really worked well in his corner to not lose anything in preparing for the race, working very well with the tyres.

“Fabio has great consistency, and probably in this moment is the only one that could really exploit the strongest points of our bike as much as possible, and he has such a strong feeling with the bike now.

“He’s mature, more than last year, because he’s improving the lap time wherever we are going, and he’s very determined. Also, when I said mature, because in difficult situations like Argentina, in COTA, in