Johann Zarco says he was left in a “sad situation” by an inability to advance on the 1:56.770s he set on his KTM which put him in16th spot on day one of the Qatar pre-season test.
Zarco has found the transition from Tech3 Yamaha to KTM difficult this winter, and was a lowly 17th on the timesheets at the end of the Sepang test, 1.4 seconds off the pace.
Sitting inside the top 10 at one stage during Saturday's session in Qatar with a 1:56.770s, Zarco gradually slipped to 16th on the timesheets as he struggled to make a “good improvement”.
“We began at a better level than I expected,” he said after finishing seventh tenths from ninth-placed team-mate Pol Espargaro.
“So we were at a good pace, improving step by step. For sure the track here is [causing] a lot more sliding than in Malaysia and it makes the bike behave differently.
“I was kind of happy in the beginning, but then I reach a point and I could not improve and we could not find better feeling and good improvement.
“So it has been a little bit of a sad situation for me to improve and enjoy [being] on the bike.
“I hope tomorrow to find the solution and get faster and faster, because as I say the start was good and I could not improve as I wish. For this reason I'm a little bit disappointed.”
Zarco was left mystified as to why he was unable to make any further gains on his initial laptime, and says the situation was “not normal”.
“As we continue the job of development we had things to test,” he added.
“As I expected, we don't have too many hours to test and at the moment nothing really hugely different was [on the bike] today.
“I just want to feel good and improve. So I will see. It's not normal when I did this 1:56.7 and then I could not improve any more.
“So tomorrow I will analyse and see what maybe I was doing wrong, or which mistake we did with the team to stop our improvement.”
