Petronas Yamaha rider Franco Morbidelli has dialled back comments he made last weekend following a disastrous opening round of the 2021 MotoGP season at the Qatar Grand Prix.
Finishing outside the points after a technical problem, Morbidelli seemed to question Yamaha’s commitment to him – but largely walked it back on Thursday by admitting he had said some things he regretted in the heat of the moment post-race.
Morbidelli suffered a failure of his launch control device on the grid last time out, and was forced to ride around a second off his usual place and to watch as a potential race-winning opportunity instead turned into 18th place.
And, combined with his status within Yamaha’s MotoGP system as a very definite fourth option to team-mate Valentino Rossi and factory riders Fabio Quartararo and Maverick Vinales despite winning three races and finishing second in the championship last year, it led him to question the team’s priorities after the race.
“I know I’m not on the top list of Yamaha at the moment, so I don’t know with which rush they’ll take this problem,” he admitted, addressing the issue they encountered in the race. “But I hope that they will take it with pretty much a lot of seriousness.”
However, Morbidelli downplayed those issues today, admitting that he was speaking in the spur of the moment and clarifying what he meant with his comments.
“Maybe after the race I explained myself a bit too roughly,” said the normally calm and cool Italian, “because of the adrenaline multiplied by two after such a bad result and such a bad feeling. What I meant is that for sure I’m not at the top of their list, because there are factory riders to care about. That’s for sure.
“I was wondering about the timing of their help, and finally the timing of their help was great. They gave me the right support, the best they can give me and in the right way.
“Everything is fine, but what I said on Sunday is only natural. I might not be the first rider in Yamaha but that’s only natural because I just am not.
“That doesn’t mean that I’m mad with Yamaha or mad at someone. After the race I was just wondering, and my wondering succeeded in getting good answers.”
Morbidelli believes that extra support has delivered at least some of the answers that they needed to find about what went wrong from the very of now though, and that thing should in theory be much better tomorrow when the action gets underway again at the Losail circuit.
“We could not pinpoint a clear item that made us so slow in the race. We could see that there was a problem with the start device on the grid, but apparently it was solved and then it worked in the race.
“But still my feeling was bad and my performance even worse, so we’re going to change every item we have a doubt on to face the weekend with a blank board.”
And with the issue now hopefully resolved, it also means that he can get back to the business in hand – making amends for what went wrong five days ago.
“Last weekend was a bad weekend for me and I finished first in two sessions!” said Morbidelli. “There are good things to start with and good glimpses from last weekend. I can’t see why I can’t come into this weekend in a really good manner. The important thing is to see if we got rid of the problems.”
“It’s important to face this second race with the right motivation and the right energy even if the last one was difficult. It’s important to erase what happened last weekend and try and jump into this weekend with a blank canvas so we can try to attack it as we are used to doing.”
