Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP‘s Fabio Quartararo secured second place on the grid for tomorrow‘s Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland. It will be his fourth front-row start of the 2022 MotoGP season. Franco Morbidelli ended a challenging qualifying day taking 20th place in the timesheets.
Quartararo was not feeling 100% fit today but was determined not to let that stop him. Though he had a difficult start to Q2, with his first flying lap being cancelled due to exceeding track limits, his next attempt at the end of his first run lifted him into sixth spot.
With a little less than five minutes remaining, El Diablo started his second run. He had to find 0.2s to secure a place on the front row like he wanted. The current World Champion was up for the task. He briefly moved up from seventh to provisional second place on his next hot lap before settling into third. Another improvement, a 1‘20.007, saw him reclaim the second spot once more. Not able to improve on his final try, he ended the session in second place, 0.076s off pole.
Morbidelli bounced back from a difficult FP3 session by securing fifth place in FP4, showing that his race pace was up there. However, he still had to take part in Q1. His benchmark lap moved him up to third place. He improved on his second try, but with the pace heating up, he found himself in seventh place as he headed back to the garage for some fresh tyres.
With four and a half minutes still on the clock, the Italian tried hard to get into the top two. He was flashing orange sectors and pushed on to set a 1‘21.020s set on lap 7/8. But it was not enough to move him up the ranks. He ended the session in 10th place, 0.713s of the fastest time of the session. He will start tomorrow‘s race from P20 on the grid.
