Quartararo content with ‘great day’, but ‘sector four we are not good’

Although Aragon is far from Fabio Quartararo’s favourite track on the calendar, the MotoGP championship leader demonstrated some of the best race pace on his way to a seventh place finish in FP2.

Surprisingly, Quartararo played second best to stand-in team-mate Cal Crutchlow who finished third, however, the French rider was affected during the final stages by traffic, while also getting a bee stuck in his helmet. 

Speaking after day one, Quartararo added: "Was a great day. Just on the time attack I found a lot of traffic and couldn’t make a lap, but still not so bad. 

"Was less than half a second from Jack [Miller] before the traffic, so I’m quite happy because I know the potential that we have. 

"I also had a bee in the helmet and in the moment it was hurting a lot, but everything is okay and in general I’m really happy because the first run of this afternoon was really good. 

"On the second run we wanted to try something but it was not good, so I’m staying with the first feeling that I had on the first run with the pace of 1m 48s high."

While Quartararo had one of his better starts to a race weekend in Aragon, the 22 year-old constantly struggled in sector four. 

Quartararo put it down to three main factors, while also describing it as ‘one of the worst on the calendar’ for him.   

"Unfortunately I had an old engine, the bike was really long and with the rpm’s really low and then we know that the power is not the best," said Quartararo. 

"All three (elements) mean we are not so good (sector four) and the last corner is a corner where I struggle. 

"Sector four I think is one of the worst sectors on the calendar, but I’m ready for anything and tomorrow we have some good ideas to improve sector four."