Quartararo: “At every track where I was fast, I am slow”

The former world champion topped the Friday timesheets one year ago with a lap of 1m 58.946s but could only manage a best of ’59.425s this time around, leaving him in eleventh and sending the Frenchman into Saturday’s Qualifying 1.

“The issue is that we cannot generate grip, basically,” Quartararo said. “ I felt that I was riding well but the lap time was super-far off what we expect. So I would say the balance [of the day] is pretty bad.”

Cold temperatures didn’t help Quartararo’s cause but - having parked a new larger aero package – he stressed that his base set-up, around the more powerful M1 engine, is broadly the same as last season.

Had Quartararo repeated his Friday time of a year ago he would have been in sixth place.

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This is the problem. We don’t know why [we are slower this season],” he admitted.

“My feeling is that I’m riding one second faster than last year, but I’m one second slower. This makes me frustrated because it’s not what I want. This is something that is the most difficult mentally, to not know why we are that slow.

“Last year I was super-fast. 2021 I was super-fast. 2019 I was fast - but this year, at every track where in the past I was fast, I am slow. The others have made a step forward, but we are not even doing the lap times of the past. This is something that we are struggling to understand.

“We don’t really know what to do. Every time we try something it doesn’t get better. Going away [from the base] to be more lost is not also the way. At the beginning of the year we tried everything [different set-sup], it didn’t work, so we kept the base. But basically, the base of last year is the base of Assen and here.”

Of the new, larger wings, which form Quartararo and team-mate Franco Morbidelli’s one available in-season aero update, the #20 added:

“I think this can be positive but in tracks like Misano and Austria where there is a lot of wheelie, because I think the downforce is a bit better,” he said. “But here, the wheelie is super-low, it’s one of three tracks in the championship where you don’t need much aero.”

Morbidelli, one place behind Quartararo on the timesheets, crashed on his out lap with the new fairing and will also run the standard version for the remainder of the weekend.

Meanwhile, asked about the expected rain tomorrow, Quartararo quipped: “Whatever comes, I will take. I don’t really care if it’s snowing, rainy or windy. We will try to give our best.”