The PETRONAS Yamaha Sepang Racing Team duo of Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli have ended the first day of action at the Czech Grand Prix with a bang, coming back from MotoGP’s three-week summer break strongly to finish first and seventh respectively at the Automotodrom Brno.
Quartararo was back in 17th place in the morning’s opening session as he concentrated on learning the different characteristics of Michelin’s three choices of tyres, but was able to rapidly improve in the second outing. Pain-free in the right arm he underwent surgery on back in May, the Frenchman has placed himself strongly for Saturday’s qualifying session and Sunday’s race by setting the fastest time of the day.
Team-mate Morbidelli also made a strong start to the weekend’s action at Brno be leaving himself comfortably inside the top ten with a late time attack in the second session. Wary of tomorrow’s weather conditions and confident with the feeling from his Yamaha YZR-M1, the Italian-Brazilian was able to leave himself in a great position to build from tomorrow come rain or shine.
Tomorrow’s action at the Automotodrom Brno gets underway at 0955 local time (1555 Malaysian time), with Sunday’s 21-lap race starting at 1400 local time (2000 Malaysian time).
Franco Morbidelli
PETRONAS Yamaha Sepang Racing Team
“Today FP2 was like FP3, thanks to the rain forecast for tomorrow and it was very important to secure the Q2 time today. We managed to get into P7 which I’m very happy with, and of course we have to improve tomorrow as always but so far so good for us. Fabio is fast and all four Yamahas are in the top ten, so it seems like the bike is behaving well here. Of course, we know we’re still struggling a little bit with top speed but all of us have made a strong start to the weekend.”
Fabio Quartararo
PETRONAS Yamaha Sepang Racing Team
“I’m close to 100% and not having many problems with my arm. I don’t have any pain at all with it, and felt good in both sessions. We struggled a little bit with the tyres today as we’ve been working with all three compounds, so the plan for tomorrow is to concentrate on one option for the race. It looks like the soft has a big step from the other two, and I think we need to analyse our data to see if we can use it in the race. But first, my goal for tomorrow is to be on the front two rows of the grid as we know that Brno can be a difficult track to overtake on.”