PETRONAS Yamaha SRT all geared up for Styria | Photo credits: SIC
PETRONAS Yamaha SRT graced the hot track temperatures around Red Bull Ring yesterday and the free practice session saw duo Franco Morbidelli and Fabio Quartararo clocking in results with mixed feelings. Morbidelli finished his run at ninth place whereas Quartararo capped his record at 14th place.
Both Yamaha YZR-M1 riders focused on race pace in the first half of the session. After this, the pair bolted on some soft rear tyres to run a series of flying laps. An impressive performance from Morbidelli, who was back on the bike for the first time since his crash last weekend, saw him finish sixth with a 1min 24.198secs lap – 0.339secs shy of the fastest time. Team-mate Quartararo, who had some lap times deleted for exceeding track limits, rounded out the top-ten after setting a best time of 1min 24.381secs.
The first of Saturday’s two practise sessions for the Styria GP will see them take to the track at 9.55 am local time (3.55 pm MYT) before Qualifying 1 gets underway at 2.10 pm local time (8.10 pm MYT).
“It was really good to jump back on the bike today. In the first laps of FP1 I was just trying to understand how I was physically. I was pleasantly surprised by how good I felt; I had a good feeling on the bike and there were no major issues. I’m lucky in some respects as this isn’t the most demanding of tracks, so that helps. Overall it was a good day; the pace was good, although it could be better. We’ve been working with the medium tyre, aware that there could be less grip here this weekend and trying to adapt to those conditions. We’ve collected a lot of data today and I’m sure we’ll be able to use it to improve more tomorrow. I think adapting to the grip conditions here is going to be the most important thing this weekend.”
“Today we struggled with the brakes a bit in the morning, but the afternoon was much better in this aspect. So, we found something that could be a solution. The problem in FP2 was with the bike setting because we don’t fully understand why the tyres are dropping off that much. We need to analyse deeply on how to work in this aspect. We worked on the race pace in FP2, but it isn’t where we want it to be. I’m not so happy about today but we still have FP3 and FP4 tomorrow to work on what we need to in order to improve. At the moment we are not in Q2. So, we will have to make a time attack tomorrow morning, but we’re confident that we can do this. We know our one-lap pace is good but we need to focus on our race pace.”