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On a Phillip Island Friday disrupted at least in part by rain, Yamaha found reason to smile. All credit to Alex Rins who managed to get straight into Q2 and put himself in a good position for Saturday.
"It was a decent day for me, considering how the last GPs have gone. I have to say that it was stressful because we had to wait a lot in the pits, we didn't know if we were going to start, I had even taken off my suit and instead then in a quarter of an hour we had to enter the track. However, thanks to a lot of effort we made it even though there was no shortage of problems. Both my partner and I suffered from the bumps at turns 1 and 3, but it saved me having improved my performance by a tenth on the last useful lap. Was having less time available a help? No, since it was in the wet," explained the Spaniard.
After so many difficulties a small ray of sunshine. "It's important to go straight into Q2 because it allows you to get a better start. Usually the first laps are very critical with a lot of movement and you have to be very careful and make overtakes. Starting in the first 4 and 5 rows helps," his reflection.
In 2022 riding the Suzuki the Iberian had won. A good memory that serves relatively in terms of the present, however. "It does not help at all as the bike is very different. The issues? The usual ones.When there is little grip the M1 becomes very heavy. For example coming out of Turn 3 without grip it forces extra physical effort to change direction because you are not on the correct line. Doing it for 27 laps even from 7 to 8 and 8 to 9 is complicated and you have to find a solution," he admitted before talking about the tires. "I only tried the soft. Tomorrow I will see how the medium goes on the rear. Marquez and Bezzecchi were fast with that solution."
Less satisfied was his pit neighbor Fabio Quartararo, 11th at the end of pre-qualifying. "I'm pretty upset. It turned out to be a tricky session because we had a problem with the bike, specifically with the clutch on corner entry and downshifting , and I was forced to make constant passes from the pit lane, losing so much useful time to get around the track, when here, instead, you would need to accumulate a lot to find the limit," his outburst.
"Unfortunately, I only managed to get close to Q2. There is to improve the last sector like every year and especially in the last corner where we need a big step forward. With the new medium tire the bike was very nervous, so we switched to the soft, but nothing changed, so at that point we decided to change the bike and use one that we had not tried yet. The feeling was good, but in order to use it 100 percent we needed to lap more. Tomorrow? If it doesn't rain, a little more grip should help us and give us a chance to enter Q2," he considered.
Finally a global reflection with optimistic closing: "The bike behaved well, better than in Japan even if we have to fix some details. I think we can do a very good qualifying, maybe from the third row."
Automatic Translation by DeepL
