Fabio Quartararo used the hotter Friday conditions to once again adapt his Monster Yamaha to the constantly changing desert track in Qatar.
Eager to get back on his M1 in the afternoon’s FP1 session the Frenchman soon featured inside the top-three before moving on to the serious business of attempting to improve the life of his rear tyre. His fastest time so far, 1’55.303s, placed him seventh after the opening 45-minutes of action, 0.524s from first.
Continuing his strategy in FP2, Quartararo used the majority of the night session to finalise his bike’s set-up before turning his attention to time attacks in the closing third. Provisionally claiming the lead with his 11th lap of the evening, the number-20 rider ultimately wrapped up Friday in fourth position with a best time of 1’53.583s, 0.438s from first in both FP2 and the combined standings.
While the timesheets looked promising the Frenchman was less than pleased during his evening debrief, explaining: “We make an incredible lap time because I felt pretty bad today on track, I felt that there was no grip.
“We know that the Ducati is more stop and go but the strong point of our bike is turning, having the grip, but today was really bad and the feeling was not great. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll have better conditions and we can be a bit faster because today I was not feeling so great.
“We are suffering so much to stop the bike, we have a lot of chatter, totally different conditions but hopefully tomorrow we’ll have a better grip to reach a great lap-time.
“My bike is exactly the same as Sunday so it’s just the conditions that change and I think that if the wind will be a headwind, I think that would be great for us. Better, not great for us but is worse for the Ducati, I think. So I think the headwind will be good.
“Qualifying is just a matter of putting everything you have into one lap, braking as late as possible. For qualifying I am not so worried, and for the race I will do many more laps with the soft-soft tyre combination. I can’t wait for tomorrow.”
