Yesterday he said he didn’t consider the podium in the Sprint as a signal, but on the Assen track Fabio Quartararo and Yamaha seem to have really taken an important step compared to a first part of the season that bordered on disaster.
“El Diablo” was in fact the fastest in this morning’s Warm-Up, lapping in 1’32″422 by mounting a pair of medium tires on his M1, despite the fact that he was also quite sore in the final due to a fractured left toe remedied while taking a jog.Surprisingly, the Honda LCR of Takaaki Nakagami hoisted itself in the first positions, but it must be said that the Japanese used a pair of soft tires to close 133 thousandths from the top.
In third position we find instead Pecco Bagnaia, who believes he has a better chance of countering Marco Bezzecchi with the medium tire on the rear than with the soft that was used yesterday in the Sprint. The Warm-Up seems to say just that, given that the world champion is 149 thousandths from the lead, while the winner of the short race is fifth, 222 thousandths behind Fabio.
The Aprilia of Maverick Vinales slipped between the two Ducatis, who also mounted a medium on the rear and a hard one on the front and paid for a gap of less than two tenths. Johann Zarco seems to have taken a small step forward, sixth with the Ducati of Prima Pramac Racing, even if today he will hardly be able to race with a pair of soft tires like this morning.
There is also room in the top 10 for Franco Morbidelli, who has climbed back to seventh position after a complicated Saturday. Even for him, however, there is a soft tire on the front. The top 10 is then completed with the two Ducatis of Luca Marini and Jorge Martin and with the Aprilia of Aleix Espargaro.
This means that the KTMs are rather delayed, even if the suspicion is that they may have worked with used tires to simulate the second part of the race, given that Brad Binder is only 15th and Jack Miller 17th. Among them we also find Enea Bastianini, who is struggling more this weekend than the two previous races with his Ducati, but she’s not yet 100% physically.
We must also remember the absence of Marc Marquez, who will not race today either: this morning the pain in his side was severe, so he underwent a new check which revealed that the injury to his second right rib had worsened. Which convinced him to stop again, after having already missed last Sunday’s race at the Sachsenring.
#MotoGP #Assen #WarmUp #Quartararo #confirms #speed