Quartararo: “Worse than I expected”, Fernandez penalty

After his highest-scoring weekend of the season at Mandalika, topped by a podium, Fabio Quartararo was left just 17th fastest on Friday at the Australian MotoGP.

Peter McLaren

20 Oct 2023

Fabio Quartararo, Australian MotoGP 20 September

The Frenchman’s prospects weren’t helped when he caught a cruising Augusto Fernandez at the end of the afternoon hour, for which the Tech3 GASGAS rookie received a three-place grid penalty.

“No excuses, I didn’t see him,” said Fernandez.

Nonetheless, Quartararo found it ‘crazy’ to be down in 17th despite lapping less than one-second from fastest man Brad Binder and half-a-second under his Friday best from last year.

The problem for the Monster Yamaha star is that Binder lapped 1.5sec under the quickest 2022 Friday lap time (by Johann Zarco).

“We struggled on turning, more than last year,” Quartararo said. “I’m 1sec away from the top guy, and my team-mate is also struggling. Today was worse than I expected.

“I’m half a second faster than last year, but I‘m 17th. This is crazy. The tyre with the harder carcass that we had in Indonesia helped us last week. Here it‘s a different story.

“With the race being held tomorrow instead of Sunday, we have to improve and try to be at the front.”

Team-mate Franco Morbidelli was left 21st and last, 1.965s from Binder.

“We struggled today. We don‘t have the speed that the top guys have,” said the Italian. “We‘re missing corner speed and top speed, so that‘s what we‘re working on.”

The revised schedule means there is now only final practice and qualifying before the full 27-lap race starts on Saturday afternoon.

“After a difficult FP1, we knew that the practice was going to be really tough,” said team director Massimo Meregalli. “We started the afternoon session with medium rear tyres on the first run, and our lap times were pretty far from the competitors.

“Once we moved on to the soft rear, we made a significant improvement in terms of the lap times. But then, when the moment came to do the time attack, we couldn‘t make the step that the others made, so we missed out on a place in Q2 by a big margin.

“We have an indication of what the problem is, but it won't be easy to fix it, considering that the time available to work on the bike tomorrow will be very short. However, we will try all we can.

“This Saturday will be even tougher than usual, as the schedule has changed: the Race will be held Saturday afternoon instead of the Sprint due to Sunday's predicted weather conditions.

“This makes FP2 [Saturday morning] more important too. Besides the setting changes, we also have to work on the tyre choice for the Race, which we usually do after the Sprint.”