Why frustrating Friday won't derail MotoGP's main man at Brno

Fabio Quartararo led the first day of running at the Czech Grand Prix, which - on the surface - seems par for the course in the 2020 MotoGP season. After all, the 21-year-old Frenchman has drawn maximum points from the first two races, having started both from pole position.

But it wasn't exactly a smooth day for Quartararo. 'Il Diablo', as he is affectionately known, spent the day battling Yamaha's traditional demons at a Brno circuit lacking in grip compared to last year and compared to Jerez, where the Yamaha/Quartararo combination locked together in perfect harmony like Led Zeppelin's iconic rhythm section of John Paul Jones and John Bonham.

The YZR-M1 has spent the past few years struggling with a lack of traction in low-grip conditions, Yamaha riders helplessly spinning the rear tyre on acceleration while its rivals blast off away from them. Nevertheless, the "weird" issue did come as some surprise to Quartararo, as this year's Michelin tyre has offered greater edge and drive grip because there is a slightly wider contact patch.

"We gain when we have the grip going into the corner, we have no spinning," the Petronas SRT rider said when asked by Autosport what his problems were on Friday. "And actually, we have a lot of spinning, which I was a bit surprised by because with the new Michelin tyres [traction] was much better. I want to keep working with the team to try to find a solution because it's a bit weird."

Whenever Dorna Sports' world feed cameras picked up Quartararo across Friday's two 45-minute practice sessions, he was either shaking his head or gesticulating in disbelief. So bad was his final time attack lap at the end of FP2 - or so he thought - that he was surprised to produce the 1m56.502s which put him 0.007 seconds clear of SRT team-mate Franco Morbidelli at the head of the timesheets.

"I think what is positive is in one lap we are really fast, because in the fast lap in FP2 I make many mistakes and I didn't really expect to be that fast," Quartararo told the assembled media via Zoom. "Actually, I'm happy about this lap, but we need to work even more on the race pace."

As ever, the caveat with race analysis on a Friday is that the main session for race preparation is Saturday's FP4. But Quartararo's set of eight laps on the hard rear tyre in FP2 split across two runs do show off a problem he cited afterwards.

On fresh rubber, he circulated Brno in his first stint of five laps like so:

1. 1m58.280s
2. 1m57.564s
3. 1m57.800s
4. 1m57.771s
5. 1m58.100s

His run of three laps on a hard tyre with eight laps on it consisted of a 1m58.327s, a 1m58.394s and a 1m58.740s. In both runs there is a substantial flux from lap to lap, with Quartararo complaining of inconsistency with Michelin's tyres at Brno.

Quartararo is immensely formidable mentally, which is a legacy of the hard years he spent in Moto3 and Moto2 when the pressure of hype around his status as the next Marquez almost crushed his career

"The only problem is the tyre dropped too much, but that was the problem for everybody," he explained. "It's just the consistency of the tyre was really bad. So, it's really important to feel good with the bike. We know where the problem is, so this is really positive because sometimes you are a bit lost."

Grip did prove to be an issue for most and perhaps the most telling sign of this came from the KTMs. Previous incarnations of the RC16 turned its rear tyre into a smoke machine with how much it would spin, but the 2020 bike doesn't do that anymore.

Ducati's Andrea Dovizioso reasons that the tyre's "crazy" behaviour is a combination of the carcass being stressed due to Brno's long corners, with the state of the asphalt playing its part too.

"[I am] a bit worried, but I think like every rider, for the consumption of the tyre and the movement on the exit," Dovizioso said when asked about his feeling on the bike. "It's something crazy, never happened [before]. I don't know how much is the asphalt [to blame] and how much is the tyre. I think it can be 50/50 more or less.

"But the reaction of the tyre I think is the biggest reason [for concern] for me. Because in this track, when you are on the traction area, you are with more angle, because the corner is very long. So you can't really pick up completely the bike and in that area maybe the casing is the reason why there is all that movement and every bike makes more or less the same."

He warned the race will be "strange" if this continues, because lap times will drop dramatically.

Factory Yamaha rider Maverick Vinales said finding consistency with the rear tyre will be "key" to being able to fight in the race. With Yamaha close to 10km/h off the Ducatis through the speed trap at Brno, it will be in serious trouble if Vinales and Quartararo do encounter inconsistent pace and get caught in the pack.

Both Yamaha men's hopes of being able to find that consistency will take a considerable boost after a look at Morbidelli's data. The Italian completed seven representative laps on the hard rear tyre across two runs in FP2, the pattern looking like this:

1. 1m58.426s
2. 1m57.908s
3. 1m57.802s
4. 1m57.668s
5. 1m57.588s
6. 1m57.998s
7. 1m58.221s

With both happy generally with their feeling on the bike, how Quartararo and Vinales overcome the tyre issue may add another element to the brewing narrative surrounding the future factory Yamaha team-mates if either one goes on to win on Sunday.

PLUS: Why Marquez isn't Vinales' main threat in MotoGP this year

For Quartararo, it's potentially a watershed moment in his 2020 season. On Thursday, he brushed off any notion that he is title favourite with Marc Marquez out for a second race in a row through injury, and possibly even missing next weekend's Austrian Grand Prix.

Quartararo is immensely formidable mentally, which is a legacy of the hard years he spent in Moto3 and Moto2 when the pressure of hype around his status as the next Marquez almost crushed his career.

PLUS: Why MotoGP's ego-free superstar should have Marquez worried

"Well, honestly, for me the worst feeling I ever had was in 2018 in Argentina, qualifying P28 and in that moment I said, 'what am I doing there?'" he said on Thursday. "We were so far [back] I didn't even know where I was.

"From this moment, I totally changed the way of thinking, I go to see a psychologist to see what was happening and since this moment we made steps forward in Jerez, Le Mans until Barcelona, [where] that we take our first win.

"When I go back to the box, the first thing I said to the team - of course after becoming a little bit more calm - was to say 'I am feeling really good with the bike'" Fabio Quartararo

"That moment was really important in my life, because while it was one of the worst, [it] made me learn something for the future. Of course, I was worried, but it was good to feel this moment to make a jump and make the step to MotoGP."

With several paddock people - including Pol Espargaro - stating pre-weekend that Quartararo's biggest rival at the moment is himself, question marks have arisen as to how he copes with being, regardless of what he may think, the current favourite.

Friday practice at Brno suggested that, perhaps, the pressure was starting to get to him. But the way he responded to the problems he faced suggest the opposite is true: "When I go back to the box, the first thing I said to the team - of course after becoming a little bit more calm - was to say 'I am feeling really good with the bike'."

In other words, the toys remained in the pram and the positive points of the bike were not clouded by negative ones - which, it must be said, wasn't always the case with Vinales in past years on Yamaha's tough days.