The PETRONAS Yamaha Sepang Racing Team duo of Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli completed a superb qualifying for tomorrow’s Gran Premio di San Marino e della Riviera di Rimini, ending the day’s action at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli third and fourth – the highest placed team – on the grid for tomorrow’s race.
Topping this morning’s practice session before securing his seventh front row start of the year, Quartararo has the podium in his sights for tomorrow. Showing strong pace throughout the weekend despite getting slightly caught out by changing track conditions in qualifying as temperatures increased, he’s confident that he can convert his grid spot into another great result for PETRONAS Yamaha SRT.
Morbidelli finished the day only a tenth of a second behind his team-mate, heading the second row for tomorrow’s race in fourth and looking forward to a close battle. Working hard this afternoon to understand the notoriously tricky Misano track as high temperatures saw grip levels decrease, he’s confident that his team have left him with the bike set-up he needs to enjoy a strong day at his home race tomorrow.
Tomorrow’s 27-lap Gran Premio di San Marino e della Riviera di Rimini gets underway at 1400 local time (2000 Malaysian time).
Franco Morbidelli – #21
4th (1’32.710)
“I’m satisfied with how qualifying went, and we met our aim of starting tomorrow on the front two rows. It’s a little unlucky because we were close to the front row, but I’m happy with the position and the goal for tonight is to just fine tune everything for the race. The target Sunday is to make a good start and to try and have a nice race. The grip is quite consistently bad on this track and it gets worse in the afternoon when the temperature increases, but it’s the same for everyone and we need to see what the choice will be for the rear tyres.”
Fabio Quartararo – #20
3rd (1’32.571)
“It was a tough qualifying session for us, but the goal for us was to be on the front row and we reached it. I felt really good on the bike in the morning, but the afternoon’s conditions were quite a bit different with more wind and higher track temperatures. We went the wrong way a little bit in qualifying and swapped to the soft front when we shouldn’t have, but we managed to keep hold of a good starting position and we’ve got the pace to fight for a good result in the race. I want to make a good start and not lose many positions, and then if we are there we can fight for the top five, and if the opportunity is there to do even better I’ll take it.”
