A confident Fabio Quartararo continued his impressive run of form on his Yamaha M1 by securing a top-three finish in Friday practice ahead of the Catalunya MotoGP.

The Mugello winner set about adapting to the newly remodelled Montmeló track as Friday got up to speed, with only the grip surrounding the change of asphalt at turn 10 worrying the Frenchman slightly.

“The change of tarmac is quite bad because we were used to an older track with the same tarmac. When we arrive to turn 10 you feel there is less grip, also for the carcass of the tyre you feel that is moving quite a lot, but the layout of this corner is much better than the other one. So we hope that the grip increase on turn 10, most of all on the entry” Quartararo explained from the Barcelona paddock this afternoon.

Clocking up a 1‘43.853 lap on his fifth of 20 trips around the Catalan circuit this morning, the Monster Energy rider wrapped up FP1 in sixth position before continuing to fine tune his set up throughout the afternoon. Running a strong second to Franky Morbidelli for the majority of the final 45-minute session, the 22-year-old’s 1’39.401 hot-lap left him third overall at the close of play, just 0.166s from Johann Zarco in first, after his fellow countryman used him for a tow.

“Today was great,” he said, simply.

“The pace of this morning and this afternoon was good, we worked clearly on that today. We saw some riders put the hard tyre on the rear and looks like is working quite well, so we will need to add it to the plan.

“In the fast lap, I did many mistakes - I even made the lap time on the third lap of the soft and I think it was not the correct choice but I’m happy. We know that we have a little bit of margin. Franky was fast today, we will analyse where he was better than us and many things to see, but I think it’s quite interesting for tomorrow.

I’m not really interested about being first every time, of course I want the pole position but most important I think is to be on the front row. If we can go for the pole I will go for it, that’s for sure. I mean, every single race, my favourite thing to do on a race weekend is the qualifying.

“I think we still have a little bit of speed. I checked sector four - we were really bad today - and I think that we have a little bit of margin there. I’m happy because I’m fast already and I know where to improve, so this is giving me a boost for tomorrow.”