Fabio Quartararo reckons that he could have challenged for a top five result in his home French Grand Prix without an “aggressive” pre-race treatment that caused him arm pump.
The factory Yamaha pilot made decent progress in the early stages of the Le Mans encounter having survived several nasty crashes between riders ahead to rise into the top ten, though struggled to make much forward progress as he began to drop away from the leading pack over the second half of the race.
Having eventually taken the chequered flag in seventh – over 15 seconds adrift of race winner Marco Bezzecchi – Quartararo later revealed that a large part of his lack of performance later in the encounter was due to suffering from arm pump.
The 2021 premier class world champion was keen to emphasise though that this bout of arm pump was simply an anomaly brought on by an “aggressive” treatment on his arm prior to the race, and not a re-emergence of the arm pump problems he cured with an operation during his title winning campaign.
“The feeling with the bike was better but I unfortunately got a physical issue during the race, my treatment before the race was a bit aggressive on my arm and during the race I got arm pump right in the middle,” explained Quartararo.
“I couldn’t have fought for the podium (anyway) but I think the top five would have been possible.
“I’ve never had this in two years so it was just the treatment was too aggressive, even in Jerez where have struggled in the past I didn’t have this problem, so we know what happened but the good thing is the bad feeling with the bike is getting better and better.
“The result was not the one I wanted for the French fans, but I hope we’ll be back in the top three really soon.”
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