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After the first MotoGP qualifiers of his career, Franco Morbidelli reads the starting grid positions with satisfaction.
The Moto2 world champion is handling his début in the top class with great serenity, combined with high motivation; thanks to a fourteenth place time, finishing ahead of riders who have more experience than he does in this class, the Italian-Brazilian team Marc VDS rider feels truly happy: “I am happy - Morbido says - Today we replicated the time done in the tests and that is the first good thing. The second thing that pleases me is race pace, which is decent. Plus, despite a bit of bad luck on the bike during the weekend, we have managed to consistently improve it. I am struggling a lot coming out of corners. I am unable to accelerate well, so we will need to take a step forward in that phase.”
Do you think you are still riding your Honda RCV with Moto2 style?
“Who knows? Maybe so. I probably still have a bit of Moto2 in my blood, but we are trying to change it, doing a bit of dialysis, trying to put some MotoGP blood in my veins.”
And yet, you were just a shout from Q2, only 20 thousandths.
“I hadn’t realised that (laughing). I must say that this qualifying configuration is really cool, a lot of fun and an adrenaline rush. It takes great attributes to find just two laps at top performance and straight away. I think that I can improve in this phase too. If I think that in 2016 I was a rouleur, in 2017 I improved a lot until taking more pole positions than anyone else… It won’t take me long to arrive at my top performance, but first I need to solve this problem I am having coming out of corners. We’ll work on it.”
How much do you learn from the top riders?
“You always learn, even looking at the characteristics of the different bikes. The battle in the race will be interesting, because the characteristics between one bike and another are so different that the riders will need to exploit the strong points in their favour and defend their weak points. It’s fantastic to follow the various Rossis, Pedrosas, Marquezes and Iannones of the situation.”
It’s also nice to beat them, isn’t it?!
“The team and I are working to get ahead of everyone. In the meantime, tomorrow we will be far off for now. Tomorrow I’ll race to bring home some points. We’ll see if it will be one, two three, four, five…”
