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Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli of PETRONAS Yamaha Sepang Racing Team will receive A-Spec Yamaha YZR-M1 bikes for the 2020 season.
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The deal was struck at the 2019 Shell Malaysia Motorcycle Grand Prix.
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Both riders rewarded Malaysian fans with 1-2 fastest lap times in FP1 and FP2.
Both Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli of PETRONAS Yamaha Sepang Racing Team (PETRONAS Yamaha SRT) will receive A-Spec Yamaha YZR-M1 bikes for the 2020 season.
The team is currently running factory bikes. However, one is A-Spec and the other B-Spec machine. The arrangement is without doubt due to the stellar performances shown by both riders this season.
Although the spotlight had mostly been on Quartararo, Morbidelli has also performed well to score front row starts as well as important points for the team. He was only unlucky to have been taken out a number of times by other riders.
As such, PETRONAS Yamaha SRT is currently lying fourth in the Teams Championship. They are also leading the Independent Teams scoreboard with 58 points clear over the next team.
Running an extra pair of A-Spec bikes is also a positive move for the factory team, consisting of Valentino Rossi and Maverick Vinalez. Yamaha will have extra data to speed up development of the factory team, which will also benefit the satellite team.
It’s a homecoming race for the PETRONAS teams (including the PETRONAS Sprinta Racing Teams in Moto2 and Moto3) and the partisan Malaysian fans will definitely support them over the weekend.
They weren’t disappointed. Both riders recorded the fastest times in both FP1 and FP2.
Quartararo was the fastest of the pair. First, he set a blistering time of 1m 59.027s in FP1, which was just 0m 00.004s off Dani Pedrosa’s outright lap record of 1m 59.023 set in 2015. Proceeding to FP2, he destroyed the record with a time of 1m 58.576s. The Frenchman could’ve gone faster but appeared to have been held up by Hafizh Syahrin on the next lap.
Quartararo’s feat was even more impressive considering that he’s still recovering from the ankle injury he sustained at Philip Island, Australia last week.
