Productive day at Jerez test for Quartararo and Morbidelli

25-11-2019

Productive day at Jerez test for Quartararo and Morbidelli

Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli made a productive start to their final test of the 2019 season for PETRONAS Yamaha Sepang Racing Team, finishing the day’s action at the Circuito de Jerez Ángel Nieto second and fifth despite a late start and early bath this evening as weather conditions worked against them.

Taking to the track at 1130 despite the circuit opening at 1000 thanks to the cool conditions this morning, Quartararo was quick to move to the upper end of the timing sheets and spent the rest of the day there. Just losing out to fellow Yamaha rider Maverick Viñales in the afternoon, Quartararo finished up with strong pace testing a prototype version of the Yamaha YZR-M1 engine for next year. Completing 68 laps of the Spanish track, Fabio’s best time was a 1min 37.885secs, 0.754secs down on Viñales.

After concentrating on chassis development at last week’s Valencia test, Morbidelli also got the day underway using an updated version of the engine that the team used during the 2019 season - and finding improvements with it from the off this morning. Despite a crash towards the end of the day that left him unhurt, the fastest of Morbidelli’s 75 laps left him fifth overall, 0.986secs down on the leader, with a time of 1min 38.117secs.

Testing action continues tomorrow at the Circuito de Jerez Ángel Nieto, with the green flag being shown at 1000 local time (1700 Malaysian time) and the chequered flag bringing 2019’s action to an end eight hours later at 1800 (0100 Malaysian time).

Fabio Quartararo

It was a long day despite having great pace on the bike and we were able to try new things. The tyres were working really well, but unfortunately, it seems like every time we put a new set on the bike there was a red flag or it started to rain a little! Maverick Viñales is really fast, but we’re not far behind him and I’m feeling really good. We used a new prototype engine from Yamaha for most of the day, but it was difficult to understand all the benefits from just one day, so there’s plenty to continue with tomorrow.

Franco Morbidelli

I tried a new prototype engine specification today, and we were up to speed quite quickly with it. I had a good feeling from the bike straight away, which is very positive. We’ve still got to collect data and work on our settings, but as a first impression, it was pretty great! The plan for tomorrow is to maintain the working routine from today and aim to reconfirm the items we tried in Valencia with the new engine, but for that to happen we need the weather to play ball!