The seventh round of the MotoGP, the British Grand Prix, was held at Silverstone Circuit in the UK from May 23rd to 25th.
Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) was in the lead in this race, but suffered machine trouble midway through the race and ended up retiring.
The ride height device remains activated and will not return to its original position.
The British Grand Prix got off to an eventful start. Right after the first start, Alex Marquez (Ducati) crashed, followed by Franco Morbidelli (Ducati) and Aleix Espargaro (Honda), and then Marc Marquez (Ducati) crashed on the second lap, causing oil to spill onto the track, resulting in a red flag interruption.
As the race was stopped after less than three laps, regulations voided the race up to that point and it was restarted as a new 19-lap race.
As a result, the four riders who crashed – the Marquez brothers, Alex Marquez and Marc Marquez, Morbidelli and Espargaro – returned to the pits and took to the grid for the restart on spare machines.
Meanwhile, Quartararo had taken his third consecutive pole position at the British Grand Prix. However, while he was quick on a single attack lap, he lagged behind in the race, finishing seventh in Saturday’s sprint race. However, the race’s red flag restart worked to Fabio Quartararo’s advantage.
Marc Marquez and Alex Marquez, who were the favorites to win, had just crashed, so it was difficult for them to attack from the start, just like in the first race. Marc Marquez in particular had a bad feeling with his spare bike and tires in the second race, so he was not in a position to aim for the win.
Quartararo, on the other hand, was able to approach the race with the same confidence.
By the second lap, he had opened up a lead of more than two seconds over the second-place rider, and by the middle of the race he had built up a lead of more than four seconds and was in the lead.
However, on lap 12, Quartararo had trouble with the rear ride height device, forcing him to retire.
The ride height device is a vehicle height adjustment mechanism that is used not only at the start but also during the race. During the race, it is used to lower the vehicle height when accelerating out of certain corners. In this case, Quartararo’s rear ride height device was stuck.
As seen on international television, Quartararo parked his car against the pit wall and sat down, then entered the pit lane, where he also sat down and covered his face with his hands.
“I thought I was riding really well, but then I had a problem with the rear device going off and not coming back. It’s a shame. I haven’t had that good of a feeling in a long time. I had everything under control.”
Quartararo explained this in a post-race interview. After Quartararo won the championship in 2021, Yamaha gradually began to struggle, and in recent years they have been in a very difficult situation, far from wins and podiums. Although it is an “if” scenario, this was Quartararo’s chance to win for the first time since the 2022 German Grand Prix.
His teammate Alex Rins also had trouble with the rear ride height device, but as Rins’s problem occurred on the final lap, he lost three positions but was still able to finish the race. This means that the same problem has occurred to both Yamaha factory team riders in the same race.
According to Rins, this type of trouble has “happened a few times before, but this is the first time it’s happened this year.”
Ride height devices will be banned from 2027 due to changes to the technical regulations.
Although Quartararo had to retire due to a problem, he showed that if the conditions were right, he could run away with the lead. It was certainly a race that gave us hope that Yamaha was improving and closing the gap to the leaders, namely Ducati.
