Fabio Quartararo thrilled by “great battles”, “I felt the contact!”

Marc Marquez may have won the Catalan MotoGP Sprint, but Fabio Quartararo was arguably star of the race.

The Monster Yamaha rider had issued a reminder of his talents as he lasted to the top of Qualifying 1 with a new lap record, then split the Marquez brothers on the front row of the grid in Q2.

Aware that he couldn’t afford to let the others escape, the Frenchman fought tooth and nail to defend his position against title leader Marc Marquez and KTM’s Pedro Acosta in the early laps.

“It was super nice battle, was close, was clean,” Quartararo told MotoGP.com. “It was a long time since I enjoyed first laps like that. So I think that we can be pretty happy.”

The trio sliced back and forth, with Marquez clipping the back of Quartararo’s M1 as the Frenchman held firm into the hairpin at the end of the back straight.

“Of course, I felt that contact,” Quartararo smiled. “I went a bit wide, and when I saw Marc overtaking me, I thought it was Pedro that had touched me. But like I said, I really enjoyed those battles.”

While Marquez eventually found a way past for second place, which became first after brother Alex’s costly error while leading, Quartararo pulled safely clear of Fabio di Giannantonio GP25 Ducati.

Saturday was Quartararo and Yamaha’s first podium since Jerez, in April, with only a wet third place at Sachsenring since.

“It’s a massive boost, especially for myself, because I really needed to make a great race, with great battles,” Quartararo admitted.

“Today we managed to race strongly. I'm super happy and I think that we are doing a great job.

“The last two [events] were really difficult, but hopefully we can manage to be fast and build up a little bit our confidence.

“Hopefully tomorrow the grip will be not so low after Moto2. But I will give my maximum to be there.”

Quartararo had shown a fast pace on the soft rear tyre in final practice and, in a Sprint that saw all riders suffer a big drop in grip, matched Marc Marquez’s race time during the second half of the 12 laps.

Quartararo took the chequered flag just 1.3s behind the #93, who saved a front slide on lap 10, and was ten seconds faster than his tenth-place finish in last year's Catalunya Sprint.

The next best M1 rider on Saturday was Pramac's Miguel Oliveira, 7.2s behind Quartararo, in tenth.

The main MotoGP race will be over 24 laps on Sunday, bringing the medium rear tyre into play.