San Francisco Frontiers - MotoGP world champion Quartararo eyeing 'several' titles

The 22-year-old Yamaha star clinched his maiden championship last season despite not being on the fastest bike.

Quartararo held off the charge of Ducati's Francesco Bagnaia, who took four of the last six races in 2021, to win the title by 26 points.

The Frenchman was the third different winner of the title in three years, after only three separate champions in the previous nine.

But he is confident he can buck the trend and successfully defend his crown.

"You never know if you'll succeed in winning a title," Quartararo told AFP at the launch of an upcoming Amazon Prime documentary about the sport.

"Before wanting more than one, you have to win one.

"But now I want the second... I will give my best every year. Afterwards, if it's one, two, three or four (titles), we will see, but of course the goal is to win several now."

The Ducati is expected to be quicker than Yamaha again this year, but that was the case last year and Quartararo still took the spoils.

However Quartararo admitted his disappointment after mixed results in pre-season testing in Malaysia and Indonesia.

"I expected a lot more from Yamaha, on the engine aspect," he said. "The number one aim was to have more power.

"But in the end, the tests went pretty well. Now I have to be 100-percent focused on the race. Everything else is out of my head.

"Last year we didn't have the quickest bike and we managed to achieve our goal. Why not a second time?"

If results are not as good as be expected, Yamaha may start to get nervous that Quartararo will consider leaving the team, with his contract up at the end of the 2022 campaign.

But he is happy just to be sure of having options to stay in the sport for the foreseeable future.

"I don't know yet what my future will be like. Only the present matters," added Quartararo, who expects Bagnaia and six-time champion Marc Marquez to be his closest rivals this season.

"The fear I had in the past was that I wouldn't have a ride, because my results weren't good enough. But that's not the case anymore. I was the champion. I'm fast.

"I know next year that I'll have a bike so it's no longer a problem. I no longer have to worry about my future."

M.Powell--SFF