Fabio Quartararo finished third after MotoGP practice action at Losail on Friday but the Yamaha rider is more than concerned by the dominance of the Ducatis.

Heading into Friday as a man with a plan for the inaugural sessions, the Frenchman set about working hard on building up his race pace before setting two consecutive personal bests at the close of FP1. His 1‘55.213s time set on his final of 16 laps earned him fourth place, 0.292s from first.

Having saved soft tyres for FP2 - due to its more predictable nature in terms of track conditions to those of Sunday‘s race, Quartararo briefly topped the timesheets with 12 minutes to go. With the pace soon picking up, the youngster responded, setting a 1‘53.575s on his penultimate effort of the evening to take third place in both the FP2 and combined free practice results, 0.188s from the top.

“I’m so happy to finally make our first laps of the 2021 season” the 21-year-old explained on Friday night. “We didn‘t ride with the best tyre option in FP1 because we needed to save the soft tyres for later, for the right moment. We tried something on the first run of FP2 that I didn‘t like, but it‘s good to have been able to try it. Now we know.

“It was also good to do the two time attacks at the end. It was tough, because the Ducatis are really fast, I didn’t expect that fast.

“We can’t really make our riding style like theirs and unfortunately we don’t have the same top speed as them so it’s difficult to recover in the straight, but I’m happy. I feel like I’ve done two great laps, small mistakes and we can improve a little bit but I’m happy with today.

“It is difficult because normally here, the Ducati’s are not that fast in the lap time, but right now they are really fast and we know that, in the straights they are amazing. So, right now looking at the timesheet and everything will be tough for us this weekend.”