Fabio Quartararo does not take advantage of Pecco Bagnaia’s mistake. The Yamaha rider will start from the fourth row, but the rival is not far away.
The race for the world title turns in favor of Pecco Bagnaia at the end of the qualifying in Sepang. Fabio Quartararo he fails to take advantage of the Ducati rider’s double crash and closes Q2 in last place, so he will start from twelfth place on the grid. A fall in FP4 causes him an injury to the phalanx of the middle finger of his left hand and he will have to grit his teeth in the Sunday race.
Anything can still happen, especially if the rain comes and shuffles the cards over the course of 20 laps of the race. Quartararo and Bagnaia start at close range, for both the pursuit could prove fatal if the pressure of the front tire skyrockets. “Starting from this position can be dangerous“, Admits the French Yamaha champion. “I think there is no strategy from 12th place. I’ll have to go as fast as possible and see how it goes“.
Fabio Quartararo with an injured finger
The tire strategy oscillates between soft and medium at the rear, choosing the right one could be the winning card, on a track where the asphalt is close to 50 ° C. “Honestly, I don’t feel a lot of pressure, but it’s very strange how these races are unfolding. I don’t know if we are working well or not, but we are certainly doing some things wrong and maybe we should have done something different“, Adds ‘El Diablo’.
There fracture in the finger it does not cause many worries, but it will give some annoyance tomorrow. “Brake and operate the holeshot, because you have to use it in many places. Since we don’t use the clutch to climb, it shouldn’t be a problem, we have a lot of things to think about, we’ll try to come up with something for the race“.
It will be a war of nerves, where the outcome of the World Cup could be decided by a single episode, by a stroke of (un) luck. Surely zero will be avoided to postpone the decision to Valencia. Eyes on turn 8 where the three big names of the MotoGP championship crashed. “There are a lot of bumps in this corner… As soon as I hit the gas, I lost the front, so it was kind of weird“, Concluded the Nice rider.
Fabio doesn’t need all 5 fingers on his left hand to be fast anyway 💁♂️
Our rider is completely OK 😉 #MonsterYamaha | #MotoGP | #MalaysianGP | @ FabioQ20 pic.twitter.com/xL8E0Jhlsp
– Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP (@YamahaMotoGP) October 22, 2022
