n the opening day of the second MotoGP round of 2020, PETRONAS Yamaha Sepang Racing Team’s Franco Morbidelli was inside the top-five across both Free Practice sessions, with team-mate Fabio Quartararo 14th, after focusing on race pace.
After equalling his best race result last time out, Morbidelli continued to show his strength around the 4.4km Circuito de Jerez – Angel Nieto, demonstrating good pace in the intense heat of the Spanish sun. The first MotoGP session of the day saw the Italian post a lap time of 1min 37.416secs, which was only 0.353secs shy of the top spot and saw him claim fourth. Although, like the majority of riders, Franco was unable to improve upon his time in FP2 due to the high track temperatures, his time of 1min 38.010secs was good enough for fourth again and saw him remain fourth in the combined times.
After breaking the all-time lap record twice last weekend, team-mate Quartararo chose to focus his time on building race pace and making minor tweaks to improve the set-up on his Yamaha YZR-M1 ahead of Sunday’s race. Whilst most riders were setting flying laps, Fabio set a fastest time of 1min 37.892secs in the morning session and a 1min 38.132secs laps in the afternoon, which saw him finish 13th and sixth in the two sessions respectively. The MotoGP race winner ended the day 14th in the combined times.
Fabio and Franco will be heading out onto the track at 9.55am local time (3.55pm MYT) for the first of their two Saturday practice sessions, before qualifying begins at 2.10pm local time (8.10pm MYT).
Top-Five For Morbidelli As MotoGP Action Begins At Andalucia GP
Top-Five For Morbidelli As MotoGP Action Begins At Andalucia GP
PETRONAS Yamaha SRT rider Franco Morbidelli ends Friday practice at Gran Premio de Andalucía fourth, Fabio Quartararo 14th
It was a good Friday; we were able to finish fourth in both morning and afternoon sessions. The pace was especially good and so I’m very happy. Like always, there are some things to improve but we are in a good place. One area to improve will be in braking, so we will work to get better on that. It should be a good race because a lot of riders are setting similar lap times. We tried the soft front tyre this morning, just to understand how it is round here. There are some areas it’s good in, but then the hard tyre is better in other areas. We will need to choose well which tyre we use, but I’m confident going into qualifying tomorrow.
I have actually changed my approach to Free Practice! Before I would always make a time attack because I wanted to finish first. Last year if I had finished Friday with a position like this I would have been angry. I’m really happy though as we know we have one-lap pace here, so I could work on race pace – after all what counts is Sunday. The potential for us to go directly into Q2 is high, but of course anything can happen. I’m feeling confident and our situation is very good. We’ve tried quite a lot of things today and I’m feeling great. I had one moment where the wheel didn’t stay on the track like I thought it would and I ended up on the grass. A little bit of motocross practice during a MotoGP session was quite fun! The pace is great and I can wait for tomorrow to jump back on the bike and get some more laps in.
