KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 22 ― Petronas Yamaha Sepang Racing Team (SRT) riders Franco Morbidelli and Fabio Quartararo finished ninth and 14th overall respectively during Friday's Free Practice (FP) session at the 2020 Grand Prix of Styria in Austria.

Morbidelli showcased an impressive performance in the morning session (FP1) after getting back on the bike for the first time since his crash last weekend, finishing sixth with a 1:24.198s lap ― 0.339s shy of the fastest time.

However, the Italian failed to see a good start in the afternoon session (FP2) after running wide at Turn 4, before catching up and getting back into the top-five.

At the end of FP2, his time 1:24.187s placed him seventh in the session and ninth overall.

"It was really good to jump back on the bike today. In FP1, I was just trying to understand how I was physically fit. I was pleasantly surprised by how good it felt. I had a good feeling on the bike and there were no major issues,” he said in a statement issued here today.

"I'm lucky in some respects as this isn’t the most demanding track, so that helped. Overall it was a good day, the pace was good, although it could have been better. We’ve been working with the medium tyre, aware that there could be less grip here this weekend and trying to adapt to those conditions,” said Morbidelli.

Meanwhile, Quartararo who had some lap times deleted for exceeding track limits, finished within the top-ten in FP1 after setting a best time of 1:24.381s.

It was a tricky FP2 but he still finished just over one second shy of the fastest rider on track, and took the overall 14th place.

"Today we struggled with the brakes a bit in the morning, but the afternoon was much better in this aspect, so we found something that could be a solution. The problem in FP2 was with the bike setting because we don’t fully understand why the tyres are dropping off that much.

"We need to analyse deeply how to work in this aspect. We worked on the race pace in FP2 but it isn’t where we want it to be. I’m not so happy about today but we still have FP3 and FP4 to work on what we need to in order to improve,” said Quartararo in the same statement. ― Bernama