Quartararo: Yamaha's 2020 bike 'more difficult' to ride

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Jerez, July 17: Fabio Quartararo may have a challenge on his hands to replicate his excellent qualifying performances from 2019 after conceding this year's Yamaha bike is more difficult to ride.

The Frenchman enjoyed an excellent rookie season, emerging as a one-lap specialist as he claimed pole position for six races, though he was not able to translate any of those poles into victories.

Quartararo did not display the same pace in Friday's practice as the MotoGP season finally got underway at Jerez, which is hosting the Spanish Grand Prix.

He ended the day 15th after the times from the first and second session were combined despite finishing second in FP2 behind team-mate Franco Morbidelli.

Defending world champion Marc Marquez crashed in FP2 but was top of the combined leaderboard at the end of the day having set the fastest time (1:37.350) in FP1.

"For me, the Yamaha this year is much more difficult to ride than last year," Quartararo said.

"So, I think everybody needs to change a little bit this way of [thinking] that Yamaha is an easy bike, the friendlier bike.

"So, honestly, the strong and the weak parts of the bike I can't really say.

"Of course, we know that our weak point is the top speed, but we are working on it and the positive point we need to see after some races.

"At the moment it's so difficult to say because there's only our first practice on a race weekend, but the bike, I consider, has potential."