Fabio Quartararo described his pole position as ‘special’ after putting his Petronas Yamaha SRT on pole, to secure his second MotoGP pole position in just seven races as the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

The Frenchman continued his blistering form and despite suffering his first crash since throwing his leg over a MotoGP machine, Quartararo managed to take pole position from reigning World Champion Marc Marquez by 0.015 seconds.

Quartararo, who had surgery for an arm-pump issue in Barcelona, just eleven days ago, said he is going into the unknown with his condition for tomorrow, but isn’t worrying about that just yet.

“For sure this pole position is special,” said the 20-year-old. “It’s one of my favourite tracks.

“We have good memories, so after eleven days surgery I didn’t know how my condition will be in this track.

“I think it’s okay, we managed to get a good pace and really good laps during the qualifying, so I’m really happy about how today goes.

“Physically we didn’t take any medication yesterday or today, but tomorrow we will take something.

“We will try to make a good start, because this year I haven’t managed to gain one position in all the six races, so we will hope to stay in this position and not lose a lot of positions.”

When asked if he changed anything on his bike or with his riding style due to his injury, Quartararo said: “We didn’t change nothing on the bike, just FP1 was quite strange feeling on the arm as I still have the stitches. So I feel, not pain, but a strange feeling on my arm.

“But I think I never really raced with an injury, but this is not an injury, but something we need to do for the next races, so is a matter of get used to it.”