Fabio Quartararo ended Friday's free training in Argentina disappointed. The French driver only set the fourteenth best overall time, which means he will have to take part in a slower qualifying group. He was 0,746 seconds behind the fastest Espargaro.
He had the most problems with cornering speed, which has been one of his strengths in the past. So he was also slower than team rival Franco Morbidelli. With the ninth time, he secured direct placement in the faster qualifying group.
The French racer was visibly disappointed at the end of the second training session.
"A very bad day is behind us. The feeling on the motorcycle itself is not bad, but we have problems mainly with the rear of the motorcycle, which prevents us from being fast in the turns."
"In the past years, we had at least a good rhythm for the race here, but now even that is gone. I don't know why this is because we haven't changed much on the bike. It's like it's not my motorcycle anymore.”
His best time today was as much as 0,793 seconds worse than the one he managed to set last year in Friday practice.
"Today was even worse than in Portimao. We were bad in qualifying there, but we had a good rhythm for the race. Everything is wrong here."
Despite the fact that the track in Argentina does not offer much grip, the 2021 world champion expected to be much faster.
"At least I've never had a problem with speed in corners before. Usually we lost some time just on braking. As soon as I open the throttle a little more aggressively in a turn, I lose a lot of grip. If we just look at last year's results on this circuit, we can see that we were more competitive. We had at least one of the better rhythms in the race.”
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