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Petronas Yamaha rider Franco Morbidelli has downplayed any potential recurrence of his 2020 MotoGP dramas after the opening session of free practice for the Doha Grand Prix saw him black flagged not once but twice due to a smoking engine on both of his Yamaha M1s.
With the issues believed by The Race’s paddock sources to have been caused by an overfill of engine oil rather than any more significant technical issue, the 2021 championship runner-up says it’s no cause for concern.
That’ll come as a welcome relief after the dramas of last year, when a batch of faulty valves saw a number of Yamaha’s MotoGP engines fail – and potentially cost Morbidelli the chance to fight for the championship against Joan Mir by costing him valuable points.
“It was a good day for us,” Morbidelli insisted after Friday’s problems. “It didn’t start very well, with the problem on two engines, but luckily the problem wasn’t so big and we’ll be able to use the engines again. We decided to change one, because we couldn’t afford to risk anything in FP2, so we decided to change it. FP2 is a really important practice, here in Qatar especially.
“I’m confident that it’s not a major problem because my technicians told me so. It didn’t feel like last year, because last year the engines just shut down and this year I stopped because I saw the black flags around the track with my number.
“I stopped because of that – I couldn’t really see or hear or feel any problem. It was different compared to last year; there were no warning lights on the dash.”
And with the problems coming in FP1, Morbidelli was left even more relieved. A session that’s all but useless for race set-up thanks to the temperature difference between day and night at the Losail circuit and being in the second weekend of MotoGP’s Qatar double-header, it’s track time that wasn’t overly valuable.
“FP1 is the best session that a problem can happen in,” he told The Race, “because it gives you time to react to it and to solve it. I would like to thank every single guy in my crew who started working their asses off to try and change the engine as quick as possible, as well as to make some changes to the second bike. They did an excellent job, and they did it spot on.”
And problems aside, it was a good day for the Italian as he secured a path straight to Q2 with his FP2 time and says overall he’s happy they’ve made another step towards finding a bike that’ll work come Sunday’s race.
“The night went quite smoothly, and I was able to have a better balance between the feeling in the morning and in the night. It was positive to have a more normal feeling at night, and finally I made two time attacks. The first one went OK, but on the second one I got two yellow flags and couldn’t really see my potential.
“It was enough to get into the top ten, and tomorrow we’ll try to understand some things. I think and I hope that we are on the right path, and that we can do a good job this weekend.”
