Quartararo: Fast, fun ahead of ‘most important qualifying of year’

The Frenchman, who has dropped 14-points behind Francesco Bagnaia with two rounds to go, was strong from the start of FP1 and fastest for most of what would prove to be the only dry session.

Although pushed down to seventh in the closing minutes Quartararo, unlike the riders ahead of him, hadn’t needed to resort to new rubber to stay in the top ten.

Bagnaia tried the same tactic of saving a new tyre but was crucially left in eleventh place.

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That proved significant when an afternoon rainstorm washed away any chance to improve, leaving the likes of Bagnaia (11th) and third in the standings Aleix Espargaro (20th) outside of direct access to Qualifying 2.

The pair must now hope for dry track conditions in Saturday morning’s FP3.

Meanwhile, Quartararo - who knows his best and perhaps only chance of victory is to start on the front row, take the early lead and try to escape - acknowledges Saturday will be his most important qualifying of the season.

“I know that it's the most important qualifying of the year, but at the end, from Qatar to now, I give always everything I have to qualify well,” he said. “So I think I need to stay with the same spirit.

“Of course, I have this mentality of having nothing to lose. But in Australia, in Thailand, I was already with this mentality in qualifying. So it will not make a big change. But I will push myself to the limit.”

Quartararo, who went on to set the ninth fastest lap after staying on wet tyres in the damp afternoon session, then deliberately torched his worn rear tyre with a massive burnout for the fans during his practice start, added:

“At the end, it was good [day]. I had the chance to talk a little bit with some people, because I always wanted to make more.

“For example in Australia, we made a really good qualifying, but I was not enjoying when I'm P5. I'm enjoying when I'm in front, and actually I had to take this a little bit out of my head, because we know we have some difficulties with the bike. And just to enjoy.

“At the end, this is what I was doing today, and especially this morning, with used tyres, straight away we were quite fast, so I enjoyed quite a lot today.”

The Monster Yamaha rider revealed that he should have even more dry speed up his sleeve when he switches to the medium front.

“This morning I used the soft front tyre, it's a tyre that we use because of the [reduced] quantity of the medium. And it was pretty good…. [but] for the stability and my margin [the medium] will be much better.

“Maybe it's so much in lap time, but much more in consistency and much more easy for me.”

After his wet race nightmare at Buriram, Quartararo also rebuilt confidence on the damp afternoon track.

“The first run was difficult. It was spinning like hell,” Quartararo said, referring to a repeat of the high tyre-pressure problems seen in Thailand.

“In the second run, we dropped [the pressure] quite a lot, and it was quite okay, straight away I was much faster.

“I wanted to stop to put the slicks, but there were only 6 or 7 minutes remaining, so I decided to continue. Also because we always struggle with the rain tyres, and it was quite OK at the end.

“First run a disaster, and then much better.”

Team-mate Franco Morbidelli was twelfth in FP1, then impressed by leading the early stages of FP2, on his way to seventh.

“Positive Friday. I just missed direct Q2 by 4 milliseconds and I didn’t put the new tyres on. Then in the afternoon I was really really fast in wet conditions so I can’t complain about today,” said the Italian.

“In wet conditions the bike reacts a bit more as I would like it to. The low grip situations I perform. When the grip gets higher, I struggle to perform, therefore on Fridays I’m quick and in wet I’m quick.

“But on Saturdays and especially in qualifying I’m not so quick. I’m the opposite of quick.

“But we’re still working. We’re not riding around on track. We’re trying solutions and trying to perform when the grip gets higher. But it was sweet today and it was sweet when you have these kinds of sessions.”