Quartararo was classified a distant 19th in the only dry practice on Friday afternoon, finishing 1.2 seconds off the pace set by Jorge Martin on the Pramac Ducati, as he struggled in low-grip conditions on the 2024-spec Yamaha M1.
New team-mate Alex Rins was half a second quicker than him in the same FP1 session, but the Spaniard could only just break inside the top 15 in what was an underwhelming start to the new season for the Japanese manufacturer.
With final practice and qualifying set to take place in similar conditions on Saturday afternoon, Quartararo faces the prospect of being eliminated in Q1 and starting the two races from lower than the fourth row on the grid.
Asked if this was how he anticipated things to be at the beginning of the 2024 campaign, the Frenchman gave a bleak assessment of his form on the Yamaha at the Losail circuit.
"No, I didn't expect to suffer that much in the first practice," he said. "We know that in the test the grip is always super high.
"For us the grip was super-low but looking at the lap times of the others it looks like they don't really suffer. So I didn't expect it to suffer that much.
"Even if we tried something in FP1 that was not really working. I expected to feel a bit better.
"We know what our problem is, where we have to improve but we don't know how to improve.
"When it's low-grip conditions, in the dry or in the wet, we are struggling much more than expected."
Quartararo had enjoyed a relatively better showing at Losail during the two-day test at the Qatari venue last month, ending up 14th in the order with a best effort of 1m51.965s.
Source: Autosport