The Barcelona track welcomed the MotoGP riders with great heat but with very little grip. This condition made the work of many riders complicated, including Fabio Quartararo. While the lack of grip favored Aprilia, which in these conditions is particularly effective and leads the combined timesheet, the reigning world champion closes Friday’s free practice with the ninth fastest time.
Quartararo pays a seven-tenths delay from the day’s leader Aleix Espargaro, a situation that does not make him happy because it was almost impossible for him to understand what his real potential was. The Yamaha was once again very slow, but this time the reason is due precisely to the track conditions, which were particularly difficult for El Diablo.
The reigning world champion hopes for an improvement in grip over the weekend, as a consequence of the passage of the bikes: “The track conditions are not good for me. When you put on the new tires, they seem to have ten laps already, regardless of the hot or cold conditions you should feel an important improvement, but I haven’t felt it ”.
“Tomorrow with the more rubberized track the situation should improve. For example, Aprilia went very fast with little grip, we also saw it in Argentina. But we struggle. At the race pace I was six tenths slower, but on this track you can feel it if you go slow. I feel like I can’t go faster, at Turns 3, 4 and 9 I open the throttle and spin, so I have to go in control because it collapses. My driving is good, but it is very slow ”.
Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
It is a Quartararo not particularly satisfied therefore the one who ends the day of free practice in Barcelona, one of his talisman tracks. The Yamaha rider, however, thinks relatively long-term and also thinks that the weather that foresees dry all weekend can help: “If the race were now, we should limit the damage. But we know that on this track the more rubber there is, the more grip you create. So I hope it happens over the weekend. We know it won’t rain, so every day there will be rubber and by Sunday we will have taken a big step forward in terms of pace. At the moment I think only Aleix can have a great pace, he is five tenths faster than us. I think we all struggle a lot ”.
Excluding the difficulties, what worries El Diablo most is not so much the tire wear as the low speed in these conditions: “I think that this track is the key to grip, even in the time attack I couldn’t do better because that was the grip I had and I was struggling to open the throttle. I was losing a tenth here, another one there, and by the end of the lap I had lost almost a second. For me you have to work on the rear grip when there isn’t any and we’ll try to do our best. I’m not worried about consumption, because it doesn’t happen with spin, we’re just slower. This worries me more, it’s hard to see the real potential when the track conditions are so bad ”.
Finally, a final note is dedicated to the technical aspect. The new fairing that was brought to Mugello will not be used: “This weekend we will not use the new fairing, we will probably fit it in Monday’s tests”.
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