The former world champion topped the Friday timesheets one year ago with a lap of 1m 58.946s but could only manage ♌a best of ’59.425s this time around, leaving him in eleventh and sending the Frenchman into Saturday’s Qualifying 1.

“The issue is that we cannot generate grip, basically,” Quartararo said. “ I felt that I was riding well but the lap time was super-far off what we expect. So I would say the balance [🍌of the day] is pretty bad.”

Cold temperatures didn’t help Quartararo’s cause but - having parked a new larger aero package – he stressed that his base set-up, around the more powerful M1 engine, iꦉs broadly the same as last season.

Had Quartararo repeated his Friday time of a ye♔ar ago he would have been in sixth place.

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This is the problem. We don’t know why [we are slower this ꦛseason],” he admitted.

“My feeling is that I’m riding one second faster than last year, but I’m one second slower. This makes me frustrated because it’s 🥂not what I want. This is something that is the most difficult mentally, to not know why we are that slow.

“Last year I was super-fast. 2021 I was super-fast. 2019 I was fast - but this year, ❀at every track where in the past I was fast, I am slow. The others have made a step forward, but we are not even doing the lap times of the past. This is some🌠thing that we are struggling to understand.

“We don’t really k✱now what to do. Every time we try something it doesn’t get better. Going away [from the base] to be more lost is 🔜not also the way. At the beginning of the year we tried everything [different set-sup], it didn’t work, so we kept the base. But basically, the base of last year is the base of Assen and here.”

Of the♚ new, larger wings, which form Quartararo and team-mate Franco Morbidelli’s one available in-season aero u🍰pdate, the #20 added:

“I think this can be positive but﷽ in tracks like Misano and Austria where there is a lot of wheelie, because I think the downforce is a bit better,” he✱ said. “But here, the wheelie is super-low, it’s one of three tracks in the championship where you don’t need much aero.”

Morbidelli, one place behind Quartararo on the timesheets, crashed on his out lap wi𝄹th the new fairing and will also run the standard version for the remaind🐈er of the weekend.

Meanwhile, asked about the expected rain tomorrow, Quartararo quipped: “Whatever comes, I will take. I don’t really care if it’s snowing, rainy or windy. We will try ☂to give our best.”