The Monster Yamaha Tech3 Team rookie duo kicked off their round 3 campaigns with two highly impressive performances today at the state of the art Circuit of The Americas. Johann Zarco outlined his intentions for the weekend by producing an extremely competitive showing on the opening day. The French rider completed the morning shakedown in 4th and then upped his pace in FP2, which he superbly finished in 2nd and as the leading Yamaha MotoGP rider. Meanwhile, Jonas Folger positively concluded the opening day of action with a strong display as he aims to score a top tier result in Texas on Sunday. The young German sped to 8th overall, with his FP2 time leaving him just 0.227 behind Valentino Rossi in 4th. Both riders now confidently eye up the qualifying tomorrow, with the action commencing with FP3 at 09:55 local time or 16:55 in Europe

Johann ZARCO - Position: 2nd - Time: 2'04.347 - Laps: 34

"We started the weekend in a very positive way and I’m looking forward to pushing more tomorrow. Today I ran a lot of laps on the medium and used tyres in order to get up to speed. Then, at the end of the FP2 session, I went out on the soft compound, which clearly works well at this circuit, and my feeling was strong which is why I could ride a quick lap like in qualifying. We made the right choice by choosing to complete some distance first, and then when we needed to cut the time, I produced a lap which put me in second, so right now the situation is perfect. The track is tough with the constant changing of direction as well as a lot of hard braking points and it costs energy, plus it’s a bit bumpier than last year. However, even though I am still learning, everything is going well so far. We will continue our work tomorrow for the race on Sunday, but before that, I am confident that I can produce a positive qualifying performance."



Jonas FOLGER - Position: 8 th - Time: 2'05.033 - Laps: 30

"It was a solid first day and I’m certain that we can do a really good job here on Sunday. The Circuit of The Americas is such a technical track with a lot of corners, so it took me a bit of time to adapt and find the flow on the MotoGP bike. However, in FP2, on the last run, we put the soft tyres in and I was able to ride quite a positive lap so to finish the day inside the top ten is a strong start to proceedings. There are a few corners where I am making some small mistakes and missing a bit of pace, so I need to sit down and analyse where I am going wrong in order to try to improve myself. For tomorrow in FP3, we will work on the race setup and then once we have found a good pace, we will go for a quick time so that I can get into Q2 in the afternoon. I am certain that we can continue in this encouraging way and I’m excited to get back on my Yamaha."