Fabio Quartararo surprised by his top-5 in Australia: "I've never performed well here"

fabio quartararo concludes Friday with his ticket to Q2 at Phillip Island. The Frenchman's Australian Grand Prix is ​​going better than expected so far. 5th in FP1, the Yamaha rider took advantage of the afternoon practice session to fine-tune his settings. He then put them to good use in the final 15 minutes.

Already a regular in the top 10 during the session, he finished with a time of 1:26.926, which propelled him to 2nd place for a time. He ultimately finished fourth in the practice standings, 0,434 seconds behind the new circuit record set by Marco Bezzecchi. At the end of the day, the Nice driver was a mixture of surprise and satisfaction.

"I've never been very fast on this track, recall #20. Last year we struggled with the bike, and 2023 too. In 2022, we were there, but I crashed. It's a track I've never really enjoyed. I like it a lot, but I've never been very competitive. But this year, I managed to find my way a little.

Before explaining the reasons why its M1 is a little closer to its competitors than elsewhere. "It's not really a circuit for the Yamaha. It's a circuit that's a little less good than the other circuits. On the fast corners, we're good. But the others are good too. It's not a positive point that we have over the others. It's just that we have fewer negative points. And I think that's where we have to take our chances to try to get a good result."

The good results this Friday give great hope to Fabio Quartararo who concludes: "[I'll] try to get in the top five in qualifying and top five in the sprint. I think that could be a good result." In Saturday's race, he would find himself in the same ranking for the first time since the Catalan Grand Prix last September.

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