There’s been a clear performance gulf between the two factory Yamaha MotoGP riders in 2022 so far.
While the bike may be nowhere near the hoped-for pace, reigning champion Fabio Quartararo has still been in Q2 every time and had a pole and a second place finish.
Team-mate Franco Morbidelli’s only reached Q2 once, not started higher than 12th, and hasn’t finished above seventh.
But Morbidelli believes the impressive feats Quartararo is pulling off are not necessarily the miracles they seem from the outside but are just the result of the added experience his team-mate has in the factory team – and he sees no reason why he can’t get there too in time.
Quartararo was only able to qualify in seventh place for Sunday’s Grand Prix of the Americas – but with a crash coming early in Q2 while on a lap that would have probably left him fastest, the pace was there until he made the rare mistake.
That’s considerably better than the other side of the box, though, with 2020 championship runner-up Morbidelli ending up in a very distant indeed 19th place.
“He knows the package really well, and he’s able to extract every bit of performance from the package we have,” explained Morbidelli.
“He doesn’t do anything crazy, he’s just well balanced. He doesn’t do anything crazy, amazing, super duper wow, he’s just very well balanced during the lap and very able to extract the maximum potential in every corner and in every lap.
“This is very good. He’s very in tune with the bike.
“Maybe the bike doesn’t have an overall top potential, but what it has, he’s able to exploit very well in almost every corner of the track on almost every lap.”
That experience and familiarity is something that Morbidelli doesn’t have given the circumstances of his arrival in the factory team that Quartararo joined for 2021.
He started last year on an outdated 2019-spec Petronas Yamaha, was absent from a key part of the season while recovering from a badly damaged knee and subsequent surgery and then finally made the transition to factory rider for the final five races after Maverick Vinales’ abrupt exit but while still far from fully fit.
Morbidelli has really only been able to ride the bike the way he wants to since the opening round of the season in Qatar, three races ago.
That contrasts with his former Petronas team-mate Quartararo, who himself made the leap to the factory team at the start of 2021, having already been on the latest specification of machinery going into the 2020 campaign after his incredible rookie season.
But, with access to telemetry from the other side of the garage to see where he can do better, Morbidelli is optimistic that he has all the tools he needs to up his game – and knows that his job for the coming races is to get on with it.
“I learn what I have to get,” he explained of what he sees when looking at Quartararo’s data. “I see that I’m not matching him here and there.
“It’s difficult to say where exactly because sometimes it’s corner entry and sometimes it’s exit, because he’s able to extract the maximum.
“I think I can copy it, but let’s see if I’m able to match his speed.
“Because you see, in some runs, in some practices and some tracks, I’m kind of able to but I’m not able to do it consistently. Because I’m not in the centre yet. So let’s see if I manage to do it.”
While that’s perhaps the longer-term plan, it means for now he continues to struggle.
Fast enough on race pace at Austin this weekend but way off when it comes to pushing for a single lap, he was left disappointed by the qualifying result even if he knows that he’ll be able to improve on it in the race.
“It was a tricky day because it looked like from FP4 that my pace wasn’t bad,” Morbidelli said.
“It was acceptable, was decent, and I felt not that bad – but then when we swapped to soft tyres and we changed to qualifying mode, I wasn’t really able to extract anything from the bike.
“We’re trying to understand why, with the team, and to hopefully make that happen by tomorrow or by Portimao for sure.
“I’m looking forward to going on track tomorrow, to feel, see, and to try and track down some improvements. To exploit it at the maximum and try to make a nice race.”
Quartararo sounds slightly more optimistic about his own chances, even if a poorer-than-expected qualifying position means that the opening lap of the race will perhaps be decisive.
“I knew that if I wanted to make a great race, we needed to make a bet,” said Quartararo of his qualifying error.
“I pushed at my 100% and I had a crash.
“On the second run I pushed again, but in sector one I made a lot of mistakes.
“When it gets hot, we struggle a little more with the grip and we have to go over the limit.
“But let’s say that I am happy, because I gave my best and I have nothing else to say. It can happen, to have a crash.
“I have no special goal, I just want to have a good race and have fun.
“I’ll try to make a good start. We have done great starts all the weekend, but it’s a little bit different on the back straight [practice start area] because it’s a little bit downhill and the grid is a little bit uphill. I’ll make a great first lap and try to improve.”
