Fabio Quartararo coy about Yamaha engine allocation at Sepang, or was he?

The 2021 MotoGP champion, who was one of the quickest in terms of top speed on day one, found yet more speed on day two whilst also moving up the leaderboard when it came to overall lap times. 

Following an 11th place finish on Friday, Quartararo ended day two less than two tenths away from Jorge Martin after finishing fourth fastest. 

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"Today was a positive day even if we just had a few laps [in the dry]," said Quartararo. "We tried an aero package which was actually difficult to know which one was better and if it was better than our standard [one] because we tried with one tyre but then with the same tyre it was more windy. 

"We have to try it in a better way. In general, my last run with more than 20 laps on the tyre I was riding pretty fast. 

"I’m happy about the day and hopefully tomorrow the weather is better and we can try some new tyres. About the soft, we only used two in the two days." 

After trying many new parts on day one without finding a clear direction, Quartararo stated that he and Yamaha managed to do just that during Saturday’s limited dry track-time. 

Quartararo added: "Step-by-step we are going in one direction and this is really positive. Not only yesterday we checked the data and always after the winter [break] I struggle on my first day in Sepang. 

"It’s always the same points, same corners, braking in the last corner, sector three, too much speed and not opening the throttle too fast. 

"My riding yesterday was not good. But after looking at the data and having more time on the bike was much better. This was also a big change from yesterday."

Quartararo keeps his cards close to his chest before revealing how many new MotoGP engines he’s testing

So far Yamaha’s top speed improvements have been one of the main topics of discussion from the Sepang test, and while it’s clear that Yamaha have given the French rider what he wanted this pre-season, how many new engines were made available raised a funny response from Quartararo.  

Asked if he had two new engines at his disposal, Quartararo said: "Maybe… but maybe not. We won’t [have any new ones] in Portimao but we have a few things and in Misano and Valencia we had different engines. 

"But here we have to test it more clearly and know exactly what we won’t. We have two engines like in Misano. 

"In 2022 we had no engine. That’s something to say. Even when we started the test we knew that the engine was going to be the same as previous years. 

"Already today and before starting the test we had a meeting with Yamaha and things are looking much better than in 2022. It’s not looking at all like last year."