Quartararo ‘back in his element’ but ‘over-riding’ on time attack, turn 12 ‘disa

From his 2019 MotoGP debut until the middle of last season, Quartararo hadn’t been off the front row for more than four successive races.

But the former world champion has now gone eleven events in a row without qualifying in the top three and is yet to get a feel for the limit of the 2023-spec M1.

“I felt quite OK on the pace. But still on time attack, I'm struggling so much. And I think I'm over-riding a little bit too much,” said Quartararo, who was seventh fastest on day one at COTA.

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“So tomorrow the key will be to stay calm and try not to brake a little bit too late or make too much corner speed without thinking about the exit. Because with this bike if you make a small mistake you are in the back, so you need to be super precise.

“Sometimes last year I could really feel where the limit was exactly. And this year, no. Today I made two good saves, but I didn't really feel the tyre moving before [it happened].

“We don’t have our base yet, so we need to find it and then really try to get fully into the mode where we don't change the bike [much from race to race]. But right now I don't feel good on the bike. So we have to find a solution where we can really improve.”

Another unwelcome surprise was Quartararo’s low average top speed of 335.8km/h, leaving him at the lower end of the speed charts, which were topped by a 342.4km/h average for KTM’s Brad Binder.

“The speed today was not so great, so I don't know why. But hopefully tomorrow we can find a solution to be more on top, because today we were much more low than expected,” Quartararo confirmed.

In terms of the track surface, Quartararo felt the notorious bumps were not worse than in previous years but did agree with Alex Rins that the condition of the ‘super damaged’ asphalt at Turn 12 was close to the limit.

“I mean, turn 12 is a disaster. This is for sure,” Quartararo said. “This is for sure. But the track is not bad. I mean turn 12… a small mistake and you crash and you can’t really make a proper corner speed. But in general I felt the track is quite OK. It's not worse than last year, only on this corner is much worse.”

Quartararo’s team-mate Franco Morbidelli was only 16th fastest, thwarting his hopes of instantly picking up where he had left off after a strong weekend in Argentina.

“We have mixed results again,” said Monster Yamaha team principal Massimo Meregalli.

“Starting with the positives: Fabio is back in his element. He showed a quite strong pace today in both P1 and P2. Our goal for the Friday was to be inside the top 10, no matter what, to have the best chances for qualifying tomorrow, and we achieved that for 50%.

“Franky finds himself in the opposite scenario. He didn‘t have the good feeling here that he had in Argentina. He will have to take part in Q1 tomorrow, so we need to work hard to find a time improvement.”