The Yamaha MotoGP battle brewing at Misano

The 2020 MotoGP season's second of four triple-headers got underway on Friday with practice at Misano for the San Marino Grand Prix. If we consider the grouping of races from August to November as individual phases, then surely the September phase of Misano 1&2/Catalunya must be one that Yamaha has to define as the point in which it emerged as the championship's true leader.

Last month's Brno/Red Bull Ring triple-header was largely a disaster for Yamaha, coming off the back of Fabio Quartararo romping to back-to-back wins at Jerez on his Petronas SRT M1, with the works team bike of Maverick Vinales trailing him.

Combined, Quartararo and Vinales scored just 28 points across the three races, while only Franco Morbidelli on - what is essentially - a year-old Yamaha was the marque's only podium finisher in that time with his second at Brno.

Quartararo somehow held onto a slender three-point lead after a Styrian Grand Prix in which he was only 13th - the lack of, as Morbidelli told Autosport, a clear "killer" in the championship aiding his cause. Vinales is just 22 points adrift.

But Austria wasn't the total disaster it seemed for Yamaha. While Vinales' Styrian GP may have ended in a fiery brake failure, a set-up "gamble" after his miserable run to 10th in the Austrian GP transformed his fortunes.

Brake failure aside, what killed any chances of a decent result for the Spanish rider was Yamaha giving away "at least three tenths" in a straight line owing to its power deficit.

"In Austria I had a good feeling with the bike, just for sure we lose at least three tenths in power, which is what we were missing in the race and on track," Vinales said on Friday at Misano. "But the feeling was great, the feeling is good, all the team is working well."

Mercifully for Yamaha, Misano puts less of a demand on power, and agility and turning come to the fore as key attributes needed for success. Yamaha left Austria confident in this coming phase of the season, with a new asphalt at Misano aiding Yamaha's cause - though it was savaged by a number of riders for being too bumpy.

Vinales claiming "I have the same feeling as in Austria" would appear a funny comment without context, especially if you simply look at the results sheet. But it's proof this "gamble" on set-up he took hasn't come up snake eyes after all, and a genuine breakthrough to his frustratingly reoccurring woes of fading in the early stages of races me have arrived.

Vinales came out swinging in FP1 at Misano, ending the session 0.550 seconds clear of the field with an effort just over half a second from the outright lap record.

"We knew that in this track we are very fast, but with the new asphalt we didn't know exactly what the feeling would be," Vinales said in response to a question from Autosport about returning to action at Misano. "But as soon as I entered on track, the feeling was amazing."

Already then, it seems the fight for victory is brewing between the future Yamaha works squad team-mates. And intriguingly, in FP2, there were further signs of this when Quartararo got exceedingly close to Vinales overtaking him out of the Tramonto curve at Turn 1

Though only sixth on the FP2 timesheets (his FP1 effort kept him second overall), Vinales spent 20 laps on the hard rear tyre he'd put four on at the end of FP1 to go fastest. His first representative lap on that run was a 1m33.817s, with the final one a 1m32.928s - by which time his tyre had done 23 laps. With a race distance of 27 laps, that is a hugely encouraging race run.

Several had comparable pace - most notably Suzuki's Joan Mir, who managed a handful of low-mid 1m33s on medium rubber - but not as consistent as Vinales' and not quite as quick. His nearest rival in this respect was Quartararo, who did his work on the medium rear tyre. Coming just four corners from victory at Misano last year in a duel with Marc Marquez, Quartararo put 24 laps on his medium rubber across two runs. The second featured a string of low 1m33s laps, though crucially his best was a 1m33.084s compared to Vinales' 1m32.928s.

It wasn't a totally perfect day for Quartararo, as he explained: "[I'm] not feeling exactly like Jerez, because we still have some problems that we need to manage by ourselves. But [I'm] feeling good. Of course, first of all I wanted to finish first because it's such a long time that I don't finish first in one session.

"It's always a pleasure to see your name on top and see that you make a good job during the practice. But, also on the pace, I finished with 25 laps on the rear and we put the hard front in the second run and we made a big improvement."

Already then, it seems the fight for victory is brewing between the future Yamaha works squad team-mates. And intriguingly, in FP2, there were further signs of this when Quartararo got exceedingly close to Vinales overtaking him out of the Tramonto curve at Turn 10.

Quaratararo branded it a "little bit of fun".

"It's always nice to fight with a rider when everything is clean, it's not dirty," he said. "It was fun because when everything is close in MotoGP, we had something similar last year when I overtook him, it's always nice to [have fun] with the MotoGP. We don't have it really often and I always enjoy this game."

Vinales brushed it off, claiming: "I gave him space to pass. Anyway, it's nice, I like it. I hope we can stay together. It's always good to measure [up against] your rivals on track."

Clearly, there was no malice behind it. But there is an inescapable rivalry brewing beneath the surface. In the races both have finished, Vinales hasn't beaten Quartararo once. And perhaps more noticeably is the fact that Vinales tends to have even worse days when Quartararo is having bad ones this year, as seen at Brno and the first Red Bull Ring race when the latter was seventh and eighth and Vinales was only 14th and 10th.

And Quartararo alluded to this after the Austrian GP when he claimed at the time Andrea Dovizioso on the Ducati was more of a title rival than Vinales, noting that "with Maverick I know if something happens we have more or less the same bike, so you know I can fight [with him]".

Vinales certainly won't want Quartararo to come into the factory team next year having taken bragging rights in 2020.

And so, in a sense, while this phase of the season has to be one Yamaha stamps its authority on given how much it favours it, it could well come to define the championship battle and the factory team dynamic for Vinales and Quartararo should Friday's form for both carry over into the race.