Fabio Quartararo arrived at Sachsenring in a bad situation. The worst since he’s been in MotoGP, as he acknowledged on Thursday when he arrived at the circuit, where he took his last victory in the premier class a year ago.
Without many expectations, other than to exploit the characteristics of the track, which is winding, small and narrow, the Frenchman declared that his first and main objective was at least to get a direct passage to Q2 in order not to suffer during the race. And the Frenchman did just that in Friday’s free practice, with a time of 1:20.623 in Q2 in the afternoon, which put him sixth fastest in the combined standings.
Following the on-track action, in a meet and greet with media including Motorsport.com, the Yamaha rider admitted he was happy to have completed the task he set for himself, but that his feeling with the bike must still improve in view of qualifying and the sprint race on Saturday.
“To be honest, it’s not the best feeling I’ve had, but I had to go for a ride,” said the Diablo. “It’s a good feeling to go straight into Q2. We have to see where we can improve tomorrow. I’m not a big fan of the soft tire and the medium this year is a bit strange, for all the riders. But we’ll see if we can use the hard ones tomorrow morning”.
Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
On these problems with the hard tyre, Quartararo added: “Even at Mugello I would have preferred to go with the soft or hard tire rather than the medium. We don’t understand why, but this year the grip is really bad. The feeling is not very good, but we’ll see if there will be a high temperature in the morning”.
Taking stock of the day and what he expects for the next two days, the Iwata rider commented: “Here there isn’t as much acceleration as in Italy, we don’t need as much aerodynamics on this circuit, but it’s clear that we still have some problems, so we will try to do the best possible qualifying tomorrow, but I think we are still a long way off.
“I have to take one step at a time. The first goal of the weekend was to get into Q2. The position I’m in today would be good to start on the grid. Obviously I want more, but hopefully we can find something to improve,” he said. continued.
Finally, Quartararo also commented on the incident between Márquez and Zarco at the end of Q2, in which the Honda rider crashed hitting the Ducati rider, who was coming out of the pits at the time: “Zarco was very lucky. He always something that scares me. When there is someone coming out of the pits, I always wait before shooting. I had in mind the image of Pol and Petrucci in Aragón, so I always look to make sure that [l’altro pilota] take your corner well before going out, but Johann was very lucky on this occasion,” he concluded.
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