Quartararo ends opening day of 2020 pre-season on top

Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli have made a flying start to the 2020 MotoGP World Championship, finishing day one of pre-season action for PETRONAS Yamaha Sepang Racing Team in first and third at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo.

Making a late start due to cool track temperature at the Spanish venue this morning, Quartararo soon took control of the timesheets, going P1 before lunch and spending most of the rest of the day fastest. The victim of a fall at turn ten in the final hour of action, he was able to return to the track afterwards and his time of 1min 30.163secs (less than 0.2 secs from his pole position qualifying time on Saturday) means he ends the day fastest.

Team-mate Morbidelli was also in no rush to head out on track this morning, but was quickly able to get into the swing of things as temperatures increased. Testing a selection of chassis components for the 2020 season, his time of 1min 30.665secs left him sitting third in the timing order, 0.487secs behind his teammate.

The two-day Valencia test concludes tomorrow, with track action at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo underway from 1000-1700 local time (1700-0000 Malaysian time).