MotoGP: Quartararo leaves Jerez on top after one-day test

Fabio Quartararo has bounced back from the disappointment of Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix by leaving the Jerez circuit fasrest in testing, blitzing his own lap record by ending up a stunning half second quicker than his pole position time. The 1’36.379, set near the end of play, put him 0.418 ahead of Cal Crutchlow and 0.714 ahead of teammate Franco Morbidelli after the one-day outing.

Quartararo did 73 laps on Monday and left it late to put in his fastest on lap 70, following it up with another not far off the same pace. He had internal fork updates to try, the same as the factory Monster Energy Yamaha team, but set his fastest lap with the previous regardless.

Speaking afterwards, Quartararo said: “All the frustration from yesterday was compensated for by the excellent day of testing we had today. We tried several different setups and a new front fork. The results were very positive, and it’s something that we will continue investigating in the future. We also managed to find a very good pace with used tyres and we worked with the hard compound for many laps.

“At the end of the day we tried a time attack and it went very well. This was the first time that the grip has been so good at this track. On my last three laps I was on the limit and I saw that I could not improve much more, with us putting in three times in the 1m 36s. I am very happy with the work that we’ve done and I want to thank the whole team. I can’t wait to get to Le Mans, my home Grand Prix, and to carry on enjoying riding the bike.”

Teammate Morbidelli was also late mover up the timesheets into third and his best of a 1’37.093 was set on his penultimate lap of 82. Maverick Viñales was the fastest Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP rider in fifth, 0.847 off the top after an impressive workload of 94 laps, with teammate Valentino Rossi ending the day in 17th after 74 laps, with the Italian pleased with the work done despite the low position in the times after not trying a soft tyre.