The Malaysian Grand Prix is a crucial event for the fate of the championship, games could close on Sunday and Fabio Quartararo is determined to take the fight for the title to Valencia in two weeks. The work begins already on Friday of free practice in Sepang, characterized by a weather that did not play in favor of the direct rival Pecco Bagnaia, provisionally in Q1.
Instead, the reigning world champion takes advantage of it, grabbing the top 10 on a track that with the two long straights may not be so friendly to Yamaha. However, despite wet conditions being the exact opposite of what El Diablo likes, Fridays are definitely positive. Quartararo also takes into account the performance on a dry track (as seen in FP1).
“In the dry I had a good feeling and I decided to push straight away,” explains Quartararo. “My pace was good, but the conditions were disastrous, the grip was really low, especially if we compare it with when we came for the tests. The asphalt was in excellent condition after riding for two days. However, overall I’m happy, especially with the performance of the FP1s, because I used the soft front tire, it’s not the best option but we have to do this because we don’t have enough mids. But I did pretty well. It is the first time that with the soft braking I can be close to my performance with the average, but the latter gives us more margin, not so much in the flying lap as in consistency ”.
Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
In the afternoon, however, the weather conditions changed and the wet track changed the cards: “The first run was difficult because the rear slid a lot. In the second run I was fast right away, in the end I wanted to stop to mount the slicks but there were a few minutes left and I could only have done one, maybe two laps. I decided to stay on track also because usually when there is only a few wet spots we struggle with the rain tires, but this time it went well ”.
The Sepang weekend will be fundamental and for Quartararo it seems to have started on the right foot. The reigning world champion is ahead of Pecco Bagnaia in the combined and the days of Saturday and Sunday will be decisive for both the Ducati rider and the Yamaha rider: “Tomorrow may also be the most important qualifying of the season, but I’m giving everything from Qatar to get the best position on the grid ”.
“I will not change my approach, I have nothing to lose, but I also thought the same about Buriram and Phillip Island. Nothing will change, I will push myself to the limit. In Australia I did very good qualifying, but I don’t enjoy it when I’m 5th, I enjoy it when I’m up front. I had to get some thoughts out of my head, we have some problems with the bike and I just have to have fun. And what I did today and I succeeded ”.
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