Johann Zarco admits he is getting “no answers” from his KTM MotoGP bike following a tricky opening day to his home French Grand Prix, in which he was a lowly 17th.
Zarco enjoyed a strong start to Friday's running at Le Mans, ending the morning session on his updated RC16 ninth fastest.
However, his form faded in the second session, and he was 1.1s off the pace in 17th, likely facing Q1 on Saturday now with rain forecast for FP3.
Zarco admits he is going faster than he did during a private test at Le Mans two weeks ago, but says things are still “pretty tough”.
“This morning's FP1 was quite good in the end, but it was necessary to push a lot from the beginning,” he told motogp.com.
“[I had] no answers from the bike at the moment and it's pretty tough to be fast. Then in the afternoon we try things to improve, but the improvement has been really little.
“So I've lost positions and I am not in the top 10. So this is a pity because maybe tomorrow will be bad conditions and I miss the Q2 at the moment.
“But, from the test we did here we are much faster and that is positive, and we must really stay concentrated as best as possible to do a good job this weekend.”
Team-mate Pol Espargaro has secured a provisional Q2 place, after ending Friday seventh on the combined times.
However, he suffered two falls during FP2; the first of which the result of pushing too hard chasing Yamaha's Valentino Rossi exiting the final corner, while the second was a legacy of his earlier spill.
“I did a small mistake entering in the last corner of the circuit, I was a little bit too [much on the] inside and I touched the kerb,” Espargaro explained.
“The kerb there is a little bit high, so my mistake. I was following Vale and was catching him a little bit.
“He was escaping me in the small accelerations like in Turn 8 and in the last corner, and I tried to prepare [the corner] as much as possible and I prepared it too much.
“So I touch the kerb and I crashed. I changed the tyre, I couldn't make more laps so I changed to the soft tyre for one lap.
“Actually, I'm happy because we went into top 10 in seventh. We had a technical problem from the first crash and this made me crash again in the second run.”
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