Quartararo: Warning light compromised Silverstone MotoGP qualifying

Quartararo swept the first three practice sessions of the weekend, ending FP3 with a new MotoGP lap record at the British venue.

But while Marc Marquez lowered the record further as he dominated qualifying, Quartararo came up short of his previous benchmark and had to settle for fourth.

The French rookie said he noticed a flashing warning light on his first flying lap in Q2 and, while he did not elaborate on what it signified or how it had affected his Yamaha, Quartararo admitted it had knocked his confidence.

"I had an alarm on my dashboard - I said, 'OK, I'll finish my lap', because I needed to make at least one lap," he explained.

"Even if you think that you are full gas, when you see these lights you are not really confident on the bike.

"I still managed to get a really good lap time but I was, let's say, a bit scared when I saw the alarm."

The technical issue meant Quartararo had to change bikes ahead of his second run, and the team ran out of time to replace the soft front tyre equipped on his second Yamaha M1.

Having used the medium front on his initial run, Quartararo came up 0.021s short of his best lap time on his soft-shod attempt.

"I was not feeling really good with the soft front tyre, and also we never really tried it - we tried it in FP1 and it was not the best feeling, so I'm happy that I made more or less the same lap time as before," he added.

Quartararo ended up 0.444s slower than Marquez, but was just 0.016s slower than second-place qualifier Valentino Rossi.

Asked if the front row or even pole had been possible, he said: "The first row I think yes, because we are like 0.002s [off] and in this lap I made many mistakes.

"For the pole, Marc did an incredible lap. The pole we never know, but for the front row I think that we could reach [it] if all was OK [with the bike]."