How Quartararo won the first battle of MotoGP's 2020 title race

It's 3.35pm at a sweltering Sepang circuit, and Marc Marquez has just latched onto the back of the charging Fabio Quartararo as the first flying laps of the 15-minute second qualifying session for the MotoGP Malaysian Grand Prix get underway.

Rookie sensation Quartararo has been on fine form all weekend. Still hobbling about the paddock from his bruising time at Phillip Island, where he crashed heavily in FP1 and was wiped out in the race, he smashed Dani Pedrosa's 2015 Sepang lap record twice during Friday practice. Despite the added responsibility of this being the home race of SRT title sponsor Petronas and its patriotic Malaysian fans, the 20-year-old has shown no signs of buckling from pressure as heavy as the oppressive heat that envelopes the circuit.

His opening lap of 1m59.3s is good enough for second once everyone has finished their first efforts. Despite Marquez shadowing him, Quartararo pushes on, pulling a gap the Honda rider cannot close. A 1m58.763s puts him briefly four tenths clear of anyone. Marquez is third with a 1m58.178s.

At 3.40pm, Quartararo returns to the track after a tyre change - Marquez, despite SRT's best efforts, is right behind him again. For the entire outlap they dawdle, waiting for each other to blink. Marquez holds his ground and follows Quartararo as he picks up the pace to start his final lap.

Just 13 seconds into that tour and Marquez crashes heavily at the second corner, as Quartararo goes onto secure a sixth pole of the year with a 1m58.303s.

At first glance, this was nothing more than a fairly standard qualifying session, with fairly standard tactics and a fairly standard crash resulting from a rider pushing to the absolute limit. But scratch at the surface, and Q2 at Sepang was really Marquez's first attempt at trying to get a foothold inside Quartararo's mind ahead of their expected 2020 rivalry.

Marquez has already singled out Quartararo as a contender for next season's world title, and an immediate problem in races. He made this comment after beating him with just three corners of a thrilling San Marino GP at Misano to go in September. However, it was not at Misano that this had dawned on him.

Quartararo has been a podium contender since his breakthrough rostrum at Barcelona, a day after he secured his second pole and just two weeks after he'd had surgery for an arm-pump issue. He then didn't buckle under the pressure Marquez exerted on him at Misano, nor again in Thailand, where they also fought race-long for victory.

Quartararo forced Marquez to use him, a 20-year-old rookie on a satellite Yamaha, as a reference

On Friday at Sepang, it was announced that Quartararo would ride the same-spec Yamaha as works team riders Valentino Rossi and Maverick Vinales in 2020, which shows the belief Petronas has in him - that it's willing to lay down the money to lease the bike. Yamaha too, knows how much of an asset Quartararo can be.

With all of that in mind, the events of Sepang Q2 seem less likely to be a coincidence.

Several things stood out as very telling in the aftermath of that session. When queried on his thought process as he followed behind Quartararo, Marquez claimed he was actually looking for someone else to latch onto.

"Honestly speaking, I was looking for another rider [to follow] because it's quite difficult to follow [Quartararo] because he's doing the lap time in a different way and it's not so good to follow him with the Honda," Marquez said.

But the reality was different. All weekend the Honda struggled for single-lap pace, and Marquez aborted his first effort in Q2 before conveniently picking up the pace as soon as Quartararo came through. One of Marquez's mechanics also kept a close watch on the SRT garage during their tyre swaps, and Marquez threw his Honda at Turn 1 in a bid to get back past Ducati's Danilo Petrucci - who had passed him as he loitered behind Quartararo on the outlap - just before he crashed.

The Sepang session isn't the first time Marquez has shadowed a rider with better pace on a flying lap this season. It's an exceptionally clever strategy, as he ensures the rider ahead has no choice but to push due to the shortness of time available.

But at Sepang, he still had time enough for two laps, and he needed them more than Quartararo did at that point as he was sat in fifth while the SRT rider still held second. If following the Yamaha was so difficult, and his crash was a result of trying to "copy" Quartararo's style at Turn 2, why be so intent on it? With the riders' and constructors' titles wrapped up, risking injury - which he was lucky to escape given the sheer violence of his crash - pushing for an unnecessary pole seemed pointless.

Quartararo brushed off the incident. He pointed out Marquez's desperation to follow him proved that he and SRT are doing a good job, and that the world champion's tactics were just "part of the game".

Again, at face value, this is an easy comment to digest. He scored another pole position with another lap record in his pocket. He has no real business being upset. But he forced Marquez to use him, a 20-year-old rookie on a satellite Yamaha, as a reference. And he forced Marquez, the six-time world champion juggernaut of MotoGP, into a mistake while trying to keep up with him.

What his battles with Marquez at Misano and in Thailand showed, and what Sepang qualifying ultimately proved, is Quartararo is now apparently psychologically bulletproof.

Marquez hasn't faced that during his seven years in the premier class. Three races into his debut season and he'd already rattled reigning champion Jorge Lorenzo when he barged him out of second at the 2013 Jerez race on the final lap - at the newly-renamed Lorenzo corner. By '15 he'd cracked Rossi, forcing him into a near-state of paranoia after winning at Phillip Island for supposedly trying to sabotage his title bid, which led to their infamous Sepang clash.

Qualifying was quickly forgotten about come last Sunday's race. Marquez rose from 11th on the grid to finish second, while Quartararo battled a front tyre pressure issue and could only manage seventh.

But nevertheless, the 2020 battle lines have already been drawn. The threat Quartararo poses to Marquez was made evident on Saturday afternoon, and it's clear he'll have to double his efforts if he is to truly chip away at the SRT rider's resolve.

However, as Marquez is already finding out, doing that to someone once hailed as having the same potential as him during a stellar pre-grand prix career in the CEV Moto3 championship, and who is now vindicating those claims in motorcycle racing's elite category, won't be easy.