It’s been a good weekend for Quartararo, who although he didn’t stand out on the timesheet on Friday, he did very well on Saturday. He started from fifteenth on the grid and fought throughout the race to overtake Pecco Bagnaia and take fifth place from him. Little by little, the Frenchman made progress, but suffered a crash a few laps from the end that ruled him out of any chance of a good result.
– “I enjoyed these four laps more than all the Sprint laps this year. I really enjoyed it because I had a very good start, I felt good. I hope we can make a similar start tomorrow because, honestly, I feel we have the pace to be in the top five and even better.
– ‘The problem is qualifying, we can see the pace and we’re always there. Qualifying is by far our weakest point. But with starts like today’s, I don’t think we can do it every day. I feel like we’re losing out in this area, which costs us a lot of positions each time. I think today was a very positive day, I think we were able to see the problem we have in acceleration with Bezzecchi and Bagnaia. Until Bagnaia overtook me and Bezzecchi too, again. It was good, but tomorrow we could have the same feeling.”
The driver also spoke about what happened today in the Sprint: ‘I crashed in turn 1, I’m not going to say I didn’t expect to crash, but I was on the limit from the first lap. Sprint races are always like this, but I’ve never been in the situation of starting fifteenth and being sixth in one lap. I really wanted more, but I felt I was faster than Pecco at that point, but I couldn’t overtake him. I tried another overtake which was clearly very difficult. Tomorrow I’ll try again, I have nothing to lose. I can be happy because the race I did today was very good. I’m very happy with the way I raced. But I was fighting with Bezzecchi behind and Pecco in front. I always fight, even if I’m not fighting for the win, I can’t complain and nobody can say that I never fight for the position I want.