Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP‘s Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli have travelled from Sepang, Malaysia, to the Lusail International Circuit in Qatar to kick off the penultimate round of the 2023 MotoGP season this weekend.
The Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP Team gained good momentum at the Malaysian GP last weekend and are determined to keep the upward trajectory going under the floodlights of the Lusail International Circuit this coming weekend at the Grand Prix of Qatar.
Quartararo‘s good speed and pace during the Malaysian GP have given him an extra boost ahead of the final two rounds. He arrives in Qatar eager to fight for top results again. Though the Lusail track hasn‘t always been successful for the Frenchman, he was the 2021 Doha GP winner. Currently in joint 9th position with Jack Miller in the standings, El Diablo is fully motivated to push to the limit again this weekend to see if he can climb up.
After some hard battles and gaining eight positions in the Malaysian GP Race, Morbidelli is all the more keen to see what he can achieve at Lusail this year. This track, like Sepang, has plenty of places to overtake, and the Italian knows how to use them, as is evident from his win in the Moto2 class in Qatar in 2017. He is currently holding 13th place in the rankings.
Built on the outskirts of Doha, the Lusail International Circuit was added to the MotoGP calendar in 2004 and became the first and only circuit in MotoGP to host a night-time Grand Prix four years later. The track‘s flowing midsection has a mix of medium and high-speed corners (six left and ten right). However, the track is best known for its iconic over a kilometre long main straight followed by a steep first corner – a combination that offers plenty of overtaking opportunities.
Fabio Quartararo: “I made a better start in the Malaysian GP Race and I‘m pretty happy with how fast I was throughout that weekend. Being able to fight with other riders and take another top-5 finish was great. But now we have to focus on the next GP. It‘s been a while since we last rode in Qatar. The Race in 2022 didn‘t go as well as we had hoped, but we have the motivation to get a better result this year.”
Franco Morbidelli: “The Malaysian GP Race was nice because I was able to battle with a lot of riders. The performance of the bike was really good, so if we would have been further ahead on the grid, who knows what we could have done? I‘m hoping to find out this weekend. Qatar, like Sepang, has long straights, and in Malaysia we had good speed, so I‘m curious to see what we can do this weekend.”