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MotoGP Portimao: Quartararo happy with improvements after last year’s ‘disaster’

Fresh from his Qatar MotoGP victory, a confident Fabio Quartararo claimed second overall as Friday’s Portuguese practice concluded.

With damp and windy conditions greeting the Monster Yamaha rider as the opening action got underway at the Algarve circuit, the Frenchman decided against any unnecessary risks at the start of the morning’s 45-minute session. Choosing instead to wait patiently for conditions to improve before taking his M1 out for a spin, his main objective was to find a good feeling at the challenging circuit after struggling last year.

Sitting seventh after FP1, and with the track now dry, Quartararo returned to the rollercoaster with Q2 on his mind. A hot-lap at the half-way stage saw him initially head the times before continuing to improve as the session wound down. His impressive 1’39.904 effort was unfortunately cancelled due to Aleix Espargaro’s late crash bringing out the yellow flags, but his final lap - a 1‘40.206 - was enough for second place.

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“I‘m so happy with how it went here today,” Quartararo said at the track. “Last year was a disaster for me. Mentally it‘s so important to be strong and try to reset from what happened last year and actually our pace was really strong today.

"I feel so good. I can‘t wait for tomorrow and to find a bit more pace, but honestly it feels really good to be at this track and have fun.

“I can say that the bike is also working really well here,” the Frenchman continued, “so I‘m happy. We don‘t have any specific areas that we need to work on right now but it would be nice to have a bit more grip on track over the next days.

"There is a lot of sliding here, so the lap times are close to a second slower compared to last year.”

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