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The second day of Malaysian tests has also come to an end and the recruit, Franco Morbidelli, can begin to draw his first sums. In fact, compared to the first day, the Italian moved up a position in the rankings, but more importantly, he lowered his time by half a second and he narrowed the gap behind the leader by four tenths. “This morning we started off well –Franco begins – but then I fell twice and we lost almost the entire morning. It was two front-end crashes due to inexperience, especially the second one on turn 5 where I pushed to the limit despite the heat. In the first one on turn 15, I crushed two fingers, although I don’t know how, and I am in a lot of pain.”
However, in the afternoon things moved in the right direction: “We tried a few things and we improved, especially toward the end when I put on the new tyre. We narrowed the gap behind the leader, which is important, and we identified a few areas where we need to do more work. As always, I don’t see the outcome as all black or all white: I need to adapt to the bike and the category and at the same time I need to adapt the Honda to my style.”
In the growth process, it can obviously help to follow the more expert riders around the track or to compare data with the other same-brand riders.
“I was able to follow Vale for two corners and I smiled behind my visor; it was very nice and I am happy to have him in front of me (smiling). I saw Marc’s and Dani’s data and I realised that they are human: they ride brilliantly without doing anything excessively extraordinary, which is what I would like to do. Up to this point I am trying to learn from the six-time world champion, who remains my point of reference, but obviously the other riders also have their own strong points.”
