Moto GP, Quartararo hits Q2 in Thailand
For the third time in the last five weekends, Fabio Quartararo qualifies for Q2. On the Buriram circuit, the 2021 world champion has always set a good pace, even when he finished FP1 in 12th position. His 1:30.047 earned him eighth position, at a gap of 248 thousandths, much more reasonable than those at the beginning of the year.
The Frenchman did not hide his happiness with Yamaha’s progress and also confirmed his appreciation of the new Michelin carcass, stiffer than in the past and with which the Diablo it can turn better and brake harder. And in terms of objectives he is even aiming for the podium.
Quartararo’s words
“It was a good day and a good afternoon“, commented #20. “We had a great pace and we achieved our goal of getting into Q2, I had good feelings today. We’ll have a good chance here. The pace looks really good. If we have a great qualifying, I think we will have the chance to fight for the podium. But I will have to do a great lap in qualifying and be among the first. As we can see today, I’m in P8 and 0.2s from first place, so it will be very important to get a perfect lap“.
Morbidelli’s words
More disappointed, however, was Franco Morbidelli, who finished the first free practice sessions in fifth place but found himself out of the top-10 by 87 thousandths: “It was very important to get into Q2 and today we had the necessary speed. I could have been fast, but I wasn’t fast enough. I didn’t do a second time attack due to the yellow flags and on the first lap I made a mistake. But, honestly, given the speed I had, I would have had to do a pretty good lap on the first attempt to get through to Q2. Unfortunately, in the first time attack I wasn’t aggressive enough. I took it a little too lightly and here we are. We still have a chance, though: the speed is there. Tomorrow we will make another attempt to get into Q2, because it is fundamental“.
#MotoGP #Thailand #Quartararo #happy #aiming #podium