The reigning world champion endured a tough afternoon at Sepang, with a crash in FP4 hindering his race preparations ahead of a difficult qualifying.
Quartararo was only 11th after his first run and was unable to pull himself any further up the grid when he had a moment at Turn 8 – where he crashed in FP4 – which forced him to abort the lap.
With no time to complete a second attempt, Quartararo had to settle for a season-worst 12th ahead of a crucial race in which he needs to ensure he is not outscored by Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia – who starts ninth after a crash – by more than 10 points.
Asked what strategy he has to fight back from 12th given the Yamaha’s struggles in pack races, Quartararo said: “I think starting from P12 you have no strategy.
“The strategy is to try to go as fast as possible and see how it’s going.
“So, I think there’s not a specific strategy, but first see which tyre to use because unfortunately we didn’t have so much time to try the medium and the soft.
“But I think tomorrow I will try to do more work on the soft [in warm-up] and see how it’s going.”
Quartararo’s FP4 crash left him with a fractured middle finger on his left hand, though he has been cleared to ride for the rest of the weekend.
He says this didn’t hinder him at all in qualifying, instead blaming his lack of pace on a mystifying opening run and a miscalculation in timing for two laps in his final run.
“In the qualifying it was not a problem,” Quartararo said when asked about his finger injury.
“So maybe I was not as focused or I don’t know, but the first run is something I still don’t understand.
“And in the second run I don’t understand why we didn’t have enough time… we didn’t calculate, basically, to do two laps.
“So, second run was much better – not on the feeling, but on the lap time, until the moment at the same corner where I crashed.”
Quartararo insists his problems on Saturday have nothing to do with pressure relating to the championship situation, and admits Yamaha has been “missing many things” in recent rounds.
“To be honest I don’t really feel the pressure, but it’s really strange how we are having these last races,” he noted.
“I don’t know if we work in the correct way or not, but we are missing many things and maybe we should do something different. But really strange last races.”
