MotoGP Mandalika: Quartararo ‘expecting to be fast, tyres better in test’

Fabio Quartararo led the times as the IndonesianGP fired up on Friday but despite being back on top the Yamaha man was playing down the achievement.

Setting a 1’31.608 lap on his second to last of the opening day, Quartararo was matched by his Monster Energy teammate Franky Morbidelli for second, just 0.03s behind. A more promising showing than last time out at Qatar when the pair crossed the line ninth and eleventh respectively.

The Frenchman was nonchalant of the achievement, however, explaining he expected to run at the front after a promising preseason outing just five weeks ago, and was even anticipating more from the initial action.

““Last test we ride six-tenths faster than this,” Quartararo explained. “So I expect to be fast because to be honest, I finished second at 0.014 or something from Pol in the test.

My pace was really fast and I felt that the bike had a great potential but we had three days of test. Okay, tyre change, tarmac change, so to be honest I expect to finish in the top five today. Of course P1 is much better, but I expect to be there.”

While the MotoGP riders have experience of the Mandalika Circuit, inclement weather, new tyres and a resurfaced layout threw up plenty of unknowns.

“Basically this morning, I didn’t felt so great with the wet patches and at the end I tried the hard front and was a bit of a disaster,” he continued on his day’s progress. “Didn’t have a great feeling. This afternoon basically we started with the bike of the test and we had a second bike a bit different to try. I had no time to test really the bike from the test and we directly go with a new setup and we had to finish with this bike because I had an issue on the electronics. But feeling was good and I think we still