Fabio Quartararo faced a challenging start to the Qatar MotoGP weekend, finishing 19th in the dry practice session on Friday afternoon. He ended up 1.2 seconds behind the fastest rider, Jorge Martin, on the Pramac Ducati, as he grappled with low-grip conditions aboard the 2024-spec Yamaha M1.
His new teammate, Alex Rins, outpaced him by half a second in the same FP1 session but also encountered difficulties, barely making it into the top 15. This marked a less-than-ideal beginning to the season for Yamaha.
With similar conditions expected for final practice and qualifying on Saturday, Quartararo faces the risk of being relegated to Q1 and starting the races from a position lower than the fourth row on the grid.
Reflecting on his performance, Quartararo expressed disappointment, admitting that he didn’t anticipate struggling to this extent at the outset of the 2024 campaign.
“We know what our problem is, where we have to improve, but we don’t know how to improve,” Quartararo said, highlighting the challenges Yamaha is facing in low-grip conditions, both in dry and wet weather.
Despite Yamaha introducing new parts for the M1 aimed at shedding some weight, Quartararo felt that the upgrades didn’t deliver the desired improvements during practice for the Qatar GP.
“While we have made some updates from the test, they haven’t provided significant benefits,” Quartararo explained. “We still have some ideas to try tomorrow morning to improve the feeling, but it’s unusual to be testing settings after two days of prior testing at this track.”
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