It wasn’t an easy Saturday for Franco Morbidelli in Mugello. The Italian is fighting for a place in the sun on the grid all weekend. often manages to get close to the benchmarks of the best on the track. Today qualifying was a little different and tomorrow Morbidelli will have to start from tenth on the grid, while his Yamaha brand colleague Fabio Quartararo took a crystal clear pole.
But as we now know, the horsepower gap between Morbidelli’s bike and all of its rivals certainly doesn’t help on a track like Mugello’s Franco’s hope is to be able to keep up in the slipstream of the motorcycles in front of him and then react in the more winding areas of the route. However, given the situation, a faint hope and Morbidelli did not hide his concern.
“To be honest, I’m worried about the race – said Franco – Today I felt the real difference in speed for the first time. I was in the slipstream of Bagnaia. He had already overtaken me, I was without slipstream and I felt the effect of the wind. Then I went behind him and Aleix Espargarò overtook me on the straight, who is usually not one of the fastest with the Aprilia. But I also felt a clear effect of the wind on him. Usually he’s one of the slowest guys like me, that really shocked me. It makes me think that tomorrow in the race will be a problem if I’m in the group. I’m very worried about the race to be honest Let’s see how we can find a minimum of speed. But I don’t think that’s possible at the moment. The route and the straight line do not help us any further. “
It’s hard to see that such a strong rider has such a slow bike …
“I’m racing a two year old motorcycle. This is the first time it has happened in MotoGP. We are facing new kinds of problems.”
Today we also saw the behavior of Marc Marquez who took advantage of Vinales to keep him out of Q2. Do you think that is unsportsmanlike conduct?
“I cannot judge whether it is unsportsmanlike conduct or not. At the moment it is certainly a behavior that is allowed by the stewards panel. It’s not a nice thing to see an eight-time world champion, but that’s the situation now and he is. There is nothing to complain about.”
He did something similar to you yesterday …
“Marc was very smart, it happened to me just like it did with Maverick, yesterday in FP2 I started and Marc stayed on my tail. I saw that he didn’t want to break out, but yesterday when I used the abbreviation to to return, he didn’t make it back in time. He was probably smarter today with yesterday’s experience and ready to get back into the pit lane. This explains a lot of Marc’s List. “
Was it difficult to get back on track after Dupasquier’s accident?
“It’s hard, but it’s our job. We have to be prepared for every session, even when we see these scenes. It wasn’t much fun to see how many people were there in round 9 and how much time they spent there It wasn’t even nice to see them cleaning the asphalt before they drove off and took Jason with them. It sure wasn’t nice to see the helicopter. I hope he can fight whatever he is fighting for now. Sometimes that’s our sport “.
Do you think the accident is the result of the qualifier they are all playing in Moto3?
“Unfortunately, I think it’s a fatality, I didn’t see the accident well. That happens in Moto3 and also in Moto2, especially on some tracks. That’s how it goes, unfortunately it’s a dangerous sport. You have to understand what situation we are in, I hope everything will be fine “.
Are you dissatisfied with this qualification anyway?
“I don’t like tenth place because I didn’t repeat this morning’s time. Something changed this afternoon because the setup was the same. We have some doubts about what happened, it’s hard to see how things are, but we’ll try. In any case, starting position ten is not the best for tomorrow. It’s going to be a very tough Sunday, but we’ll still try to fight. “