MotoGP Catalunya: ‘Mugello and here was meant to be difficult’ - Quartararo

Monster Energy Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo completed a commanding race victory at Barcelona with a six-second lead in the CatalanGP.

In a weekend which saw the Frenchman secure his future with Yamaha for a further two seasons and title sponsor Monster Energy do likewise in a multi-year deal, Quartararo led from the outset to dominate at the flag after an initially difficult Friday.

“I felt good from the beginning,” Quartararo said from Parc Fermé of his Sunday in Spain. “I knew I wanted to be first in the first corner and finally I managed to get something crazy.

“I’m so happy, amazing race. I felt great. I was not controlling all the race but pushing from the beginning and then see how was my rear tyre going, was really good. I had some margin and always increasing my lead so so happy. Mugello and here was meant to be difficult, but two, one is a really great result.

“I was not expecting to be that consistent on the race and that fast,” he continued, on his potential heading into the 24-lap race. “I mean, the pace was good, but was not extremely fast.

“Of course the start was something super important. My strategy was to at least doing five laps, not pushing to the limit but pushing hard. I take a risk because I wanted to pull away but I knew that if I could not, my goal was five laps pushing hard, but I knew if these five laps was not great, I used a big performance of my rear tyre. But fortunately it worked.

“Turn three and four we know that is two corners that, basically I will not say 50 per cent of the tyre consumption is there but I was taking care of a lot. Was something super important to be consistent and yeah, when I saw the lead after a few laps it was amazing.

“When you are leading like that, the race is super