Franco Morbidelli is ‘close to my maximum’ in the Qatar MotoGP season opening, although his time on the A-spec Petronas bike is only a bit faster than last year’s.
Franco Morbidelli has had a lot of changes since the second Qatar MotoGP race the year before, including a new (factory) squad, new bike, and surgically repaired ligaments in his left knee.
However, his racing time was very similar to that of teammate Fabio Quartararo.
The Italian was 0.126s slower than a year ago when he completed the 22 circuits on Sunday. The issue was that Enea Bastianini’s fastest time this year was over 10-seconds faster.
Morbidelli fell from +5.8s to +16.7s in eleventh spot, despite being one place better placed than on the A-Spec Petronas Yamaha.
Morbidelli returned to eleventh place by lap 12, helped by incidents ahead of him, after dropping from twelfth to seventeenth in the early stages.
Morbidelli, like fellow factory-spec riders Quartararo (9th) and Andrea Dovizioso (14th), was plagued by excessive tyre pressure concerns, as well as the M1’s notoriously poor top speed.
“Both riders experienced unusually high tyre pressure almost immediately from the beginning of the race. This prohibited them from being on the attack like they normally would. We will be investigating why this happened,” said team director Massimo Meregalli.
Morbidelli said: “It was a difficult race. We struggled this weekend in terms of rear grip. That prevented us from having a wonderful performance.
“In the race I had a really poor start. I wasn’t cunning enough to make the right moves in the first laps, and I lost a lot of time. And then when I picked up my pace, I was not so bad.
“I was close to my maximum, that felt good. The problem is that our maximum was not enough to be on top this weekend.
“But it’s just the first round. We know Qatar is a particular track and a particular weekend, so we move forward. We keep in mind the problems that we have, and we’ll work on them for sure.
“But we go to Mandalika with the same energy as always, we will try to do a good job there, and then we‘ll see where we stand there.”
Morbidelli had the best Yamaha lap of the race, about a tenth of a second faster than Quartararo, but it was only the sixth best overall.
The #21’s top speed (349.5 km/h) was also the highest of the Yamahas, although it only placed 20th out of 24 riders.
The uniforms of MOTOGP racing riders are currently available at the following websites for a reasonable price:
Franco Morbidelli, Yamaha, Andrea Dovizioso, Fabio Quartararo, Enea Bastianini, MOTO, Moto racing, Motocross, MOTOGP, MXGP
