You are here

MotoGP, The strange case of Dr. Morbidelli and Mr. 'Morbido' in Yamaha

Morbidelli's 2022 season has been marked by a chronic lack of performance with the Yamaha M1 and the Aragon GP was certainly no exception. It was in fact on this track, in 2020, that Franco grabbed his second of three wins of the season and became world championship runner-up

MotoGP: The strange case of Dr. Morbidelli and Mr. 'Morbido' in Yamaha

Share


by Piersalvo Patané

The Italian-Brazilian, born in 1994, Moto 2 world champion in 2017, made his debut in MotoGP the following year with the less competitive Honda "customer" bike of the Mark VDS team, but still managed to pick up 50 points and finish 15th in the standings. He moved to Yamaha in 2019 in the newly-created Yamaha Petronas SRT team where he finally managed to shine by obtaining numerous placings and 10th overall in the final standings. But it was 2020 where Franco really came into his own, obtaining 5 podiums and 3 victories (Misano, Aragon, Valencia) and two pole positions. 2020 therefore saw him fighting for the world championship, albeit still with the 2019 bike and only a broken engine at Jerez probably deprived him of his world title dream, given that Mir won that championship by winning only one race.

2021 promised to be a complicated year even before it started. The Petronas team welcomed its mentor Valentino Rossi, in the final year of his career, who was given the only factory bike available. For Franco, once again, there was the old 2019 bike, albeit with some updates. Despite everything, he managed to take a fourth place in Portimao and a third place in Jerez.

From that day on, something really broke down (in every sense). After a few races Franco had to stop for a knee operation that only saw him return at the end of the championship, at Misano. But during the period he was stopped, many things changed: Valentino announced his retirement and Vinales broke the contract with the Factory team, so Yamaha decided to field Franco in the factory team alongside Quartararo for the remaining races of the championship and for the next two years. Unfortunately, the jump from the 2019 bike to the 2021 bike did not bring the hoped-for results and, while in 2021 Franco was partly justified by the fact that he was still recovering (best result 11th in Valencia), 2022 saw the negative trend continue with only a 7th place as best result in Indonesia in particular conditions, with many races finished out of the points and only 19th place in the standings. This brought us to Aragon, a track he loved, where only 2 years earlier, with a 2019 bike, he had managed to win against the Mir/Rins Suzuki duo.

The following analysis shows a comparison of Franco's performances after two years, considering what in that strange 2020 championship was called the Teruel GP (second consecutive GP on the same track in Aragon). Let’s remember that Morbidelli did not race in Aragon last year due to injury.

Qualifying performance: almost 8 tenths compared to the 2020 time

 

While in 2020 Franco fought for pole position, lost only to the surprising Nakagami (who, you will remember, threw everything to the winds after a few corners), this year the official Yamaha team rider was unable to do any better than 20th position, over 1.6 seconds slower than the pole set by Bagnaia. While this year’s pole was about 8 tenths faster than that of 2020, Franco unfortunately worsened his time by about 8 tenths, considering the best split times of both years. Comparing the various partials, we can see an average worsening of 2 tenths in each sector, despite a better top speed (+3 km/h), which was widely predictable given that we are talking about the Yamaha M1 2022 against a 2019 bike. Also in T4 therefore, despite the long straight , Franco confirmed the gap of 2 tenths, only managing to defend himself in T3, where he lost just over a tenth.

Race performance: +18 seconds on the total race time!

Unfortunately, Franco's performance drop was also repeated in the race. While in 2020 Morbidelli managed to cross the finish line first, this year he failed to do any better than 17th position, more than 30 seconds behind the winner (Bastianini), preceded by more than 10 seconds by Cal Crutchlow, called in to replace the retired Andrea Dovizioso for the remaining 6 races of the championship in Razali's team. It is also impressive how Franco was ahead - in a very marginal way – of the rookie from Moto3, Darryn Binder (about 1 second at the end of the race). The graph below shows how, despite this year's race being around 10 seconds faster than 2020, Franco’s final time was worse by 18 seconds.

 

Gap of Franco Morbidelli in 2022 compared to his race in 2020

 

Analysing the average in the various sectors, excluding the first and last lap, we see how the gap is quite marked in the first and third sectors, while it is more contained in sector 2. Franco manages to be a little faster in T4 but this was justifiable by the fact that during the 2020 race, having always been in the lead, he could not take advantage of any tows on the long straight, while it is likely that he used several this year, running in the rear.

Franco Morbidelli’s average of the sectors in the race: first and last lap are excluded from the calculation

 

Nel grafico in basso, invece, il confronto sul passo gara tenuto in entrambi gli anni. Questo grafico ancora una volta non tiene conto del primo e dell’ultimo di gara. Purtroppo il peggioramento non è frutto di un errore o di una serie di giri andati male ma è dovuto ad un delta medio di circa mezzo secondo al giro per un totale quindi di circa 11 secondi persi di…passo. Se a questi aggiungiamo i 7 secondi che Franco ha perso quest’anno causa partenza nelle retrovie, ecco che ritroviamo i 18 secondi di cui sopra. Soltanto negli ultimi giri Franco ha avvicinato leggermente i tempi che aveva fatto 2 anni prima.

In the graph below, however, the comparison on the race pace held in both years. This graph once again does not take into account the first and last lap of the race. Unfortunately, the worsening is not the result of an error or a series of laps that went wrong but is due to an average delta of about half a second per lap for a total of about 11 seconds lost in… pace. If we add to these the 7 seconds that Franco lost this year due to him starting at the back, we find the 18 seconds mentioned above. Only in the final laps did Franco slightly approach the times he had set 2 years earlier.

Race pace of Franco Morbidelli: 2022 (orange) vs 2020 (blue)

 

 

How is Franco doing on the other tracks? And compared to Quartararo?

As previously mentioned, the Aragon GP was no exception and Franco's performances are quite in line with those shown in the other rounds of the 2022 world championship.

The graph below shows us the average gap in the race (in seconds per lap) of all the Yamahas compared to the rider who seems to be the only one who can interpret this bike, namely Quartararo. We only considered the races in which both Morbidelli and Quartararo crossed the finish line, with the exception of Indonesia, an "anomalous" race, as it was held in the wet.

 

Average gap race by race (seconds per lap) of the 3 Yamaha riders in reference to Quartararo

The table, on the other hand, summarizes the average of the gaps picked up in the race by the three riders above, with respect to the benchmark rider, Quartararo. Here the average is made considering the individual races concluded by the various riders, again with respect to Quartararo.

The numbers don’t lie: Franco is on average about 1 second slower per lap than Fabio in the race and is aligned with Dovizioso's performance, with Binder slowly seeming to reduce the gap which, however, settles on a second and a half on average.

In conclusion, certainly there have been several factors that negatively affect Franco's performance. Factors ranging from physical problems to sudden changes in the bike/team/crew chief: we remember that Franco went directly from a well-known bike like the 2019 that he used for two seasons to a 2021 bike (for a few races) and then the 2022 one.

The Yamaha M1 of the last 2 years is certainly not the best bike but, Quartararo's results and partly the modest difference that Morbidelli can make on rookie Binder suggest that perhaps it is not as "poor" a bike as many observers paint it or at least it is very difficult to give an opinion on it, without prejudice to the deficit in terms of top speed compared to the fastest bikes.

 

Related articles