PETRONAS Yamaha SRT Shine in Free Practice in Misano

18-09-2020

PETRONAS Yamaha SRT Shine in Free Practice in Misano

Quartararo and Morbidelli third and sixth at the start of the Emilia Romagna GP.

For the second weekend running, the PETRONAS Yamaha SRT riders took to Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli for the next round in the MotoGP championship. A strong day for the pair saw Fabio Quartararo finish third in the combined practice times, with Franco Morbidelli sixth.

Quartararo started FP1 with a series of laps that placed him within the top-ten, but the Frenchman put in a couple of blisteringly quick laps in the final few minutes to end the session top with a 1min 31.721secs lap. Consistently strong throughout FP2, Fabio only missed out on topping the session by 0.016 seconds. His 1min 31.644secs time placed him third in the session and also overall.

Team-mate Morbidelli also had a good opening day of the Emilia Romagna GP, ending the first practice session second with a 1min 31.811 lap – just 0.090secs shy of Quartararo, despite not feeling 100% due to ongoing sickness. The Italian also posted a series of good laps in the afternoon session, staying at the sharp end for the majority of the 45 minutes. He finished FP2 14th, with a best lap of 1min 32.307secs, and ended the day sixth.

The MotoGP FP3 session will commence at 9.55am local time (3.55pm MYT) tomorrow, with qualifying at 2.10pm local time (8.10pm MYT).

Fabio Quartararo

"Honestly I felt great today. I was able to make a bit of a long-run, about 16 laps, all in the 1min 32 seconds and that was really positive. Our pace feels good. We have modified the settings a little bit since last week, and I feel a bit better on the bike. There are still some areas for improvement, but I’m really looking forward to tomorrow. We tried a time attack on the medium tyre and we were fast. I think the soft has a little bit more potential but we finished less than one tenth from the top on this tyre. I’m also really happy with our practice starts too. The pace is great, which is really important, and we will see what we find tomorrow and Sunday. I want to fight for the pole position again and I’m feeling stronger than last week so we will see."

Franco Morbidelli

"Today was a good Friday. We’ve been reconfirming our speed this morning and checking what the track conditions were like – I felt quite good. This afternoon the conditions were a little bit different and we had to adapt to that. I think we made the right choices and we improved the settings of the bike throughout the day. We were able to have a good pace, so this is positive. I will rest a little bit now before tomorrow, to try to be in even better shape and see where we are. Tomorrow morning it will be important to be fast in our time attacks."