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Fabio Quartararo

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With seven races left in the 2022 MotoGP season, we are approaching the final stretch. There are 175 points left to play for, and Fabio Quartararo has a lead of 32 points over Aleix Espargaro.

That means that Espargaro still has his fate in his own hands: he can become 2022 MotoGP champion by the simple expedient of winning every MotoGP race left, and if Quartararo finishes second in all seven races, the Aprilia rider would take his first championship by a slim margin of 3 points.

Is the 2022 Yamaha M1 a good MotoGP bike? It is a simple question with a simple answer: it depends. If Fabio Quartararo is riding it, it is good enough to have won two races, get on the podium in three others, and lead the 2022 MotoGP championship by 22 points.

But if anyone other than Fabio Quartararo is riding it, it is not quite so good. The best result by the trio of Franco Morbidelli, Andrea Dovizioso, and Darryn Binder is a seventh place, by Morbidelli at Mandalika. That seventh place is one of only two top tens for the other Yamahas, Darryn Binder being the other at the same race.

Together, Morbidelli, Dovizioso, and Binder have scored a grand total of 40 points. Fabio Quartararo has 147, over three times as many. And he has never finished behind any of the other Yamahas throughout the season.

In fact, the closest any other Yamaha rider has gotten to Quartararo is Franco Morbidelli’s eleventh place, two places behind his teammate, at the season opener at Qatar. Since then, Quartararo and the other Yamaha riders have been operating on different planets.

In 2021, the Yamaha M1 was the fastest motorcycle around a grand prix race track.

The evidence for that is clear: 2021 MotoGP world champion Fabio Quartararo. Quartararo had five race victories, more than anyone else, and five race fastest laps. He also had five pole positions, one less than Pecco Bagnaia.

So the bike was good, despite the chaos elsewhere making it look otherwise. Quartararo was the only constant in 2021.

With the bikes all crated up and shipped to Indonesia, and the entire paddock flown to Mandalika on the island of Lombok (bar those stuck in quarantine in Malaysia after testing positive for COVID-19), there is time to look back at the Sepang MotoGP test.

Because this year is so different to previous years in a number of ways, I am breaking it down into two parts.

First, some general points that apply to the test itself and across several or all manufacturers, and later in the week, a breakdown manufacturer by manufacturer.

Episode 257 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one sees us talking to the current MotoGP World Champion, Fabio Quartararo.

On the mics previewing the interview, we have Steve EnglishDavid Emmett, Neil Morrison, and Adam Wheeler, as they look back on the Frenchman’s 2021 season, and his path to becoming the first grand prix champion from France.

The guys start off the show going through the the top moments of the Frenchman’s season, from “Zippergate” to him buttoning up the season title with rounds to spare.

From there, we hear from the man himself, in a short interview with our very own Adam Wheeler. It’s all very interesting, and not to be missed.

Can Fabio defend the title in 2022? And will he continue his career with Yamaha going forward? The guys discuss this issues and more. As always, the conversation is insightful and lively, and adds another dimension to what goes on in the paddock.

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We have been fortunate this year compared to 2020. Last year, we had repeat-races at five circuits, making up ten of the fourteen MotoGP rounds held.

In 2021, the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic has improved to the point that MotoGP managed to visit three different continents, needing to return to the same circuit only three times.

Six races out of eighteen is far from perfect, but much better than the situation in 2020.

Episode 247 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this show covers the MotoGP action from the Emilia-Romagna GP at the Misano World Circuit in Italy.

On the mics, we have Steve EnglishDavid Emmett, and Neil Morrison, as they cover less of what transpired on the track, and more about Fabio Quartararo’s first MotoGP World Championship.

These past two pandemic-stricken season have been strange years for me as a journalist. Instead of heading to race tracks almost every weekend, I have been sat at home, staring at a computer screen to talk to riders.

There have been ups and downs: on the plus side, we journalists get to talk to more riders than when we were at the track, because computers make it possible to switch from one rider to another with a couple of mouse clicks, rather than sprint through half the paddock from race truck to hospitality and back again.

Episode 233 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this show covers the MotoGP action from the British GP at Silverstone.

On the mics, we have David Emmett, Neil Morrison, and Adam Wheeler, as they cover what turned out to be a very eventful weekend in Austria.

The guys cover a busy weekend in the UK, and start things off with a discussion of Quartararo’s win, and whether it means he has the 2022 title in the bag, or whether a crash like he had in FP2 could still stop him in his tracks.