The Malaysian Grand Prix represents a new weekend of suffering for Franco Morbidelli, who on Friday was unable to directly access Q2, having to go through the first qualifying phase, which he then failed to pass. Precisely on Saturday in Sepang, the Roman from Yamaha found himself the protagonist in spite of himself in a skirmish with Marc Marquez, who now has the habit of choosing a rider to follow in his wake.
The Yamahas had shown themselves to be in better shape than usual and Morbidelli had missed Q2 by just 84 thousandths, so Marc had relied on the Yamaha standard bearer as a driving force to hope to access the decisive qualifying phase. However, he had not taken into account Softwho refused to give him the slipstream, slowing down and standing aside, also signaling with hand gestures his non-intention to help him in his aim.
“Once upon a time, when you showed that you didn’t intend to pull the driver, he thanked and understood,” Morbidelli declared to the press at the end of the Sprint, when he was asked what he thought of what had happened in qualifying. “But today it’s no longer like that, in my opinion it’s how things go today in MotoGP. It’s neither good nor bad, just how things have developed. Maybe if once the moments of disrespect between drivers were limited to the last 5 laps of the race, now they are from the first lap on Friday until the last lap of the race. The pressure has increased, we are closer, times change… I don’t know, but today it’s like this and we play according to today’s rules.”
On several occasions the drivers have shown disappointment towards the strategy of some colleagues, who, in order to gain some positions on the grid, seek slipstreams in qualifying by influencing the laps of others. However, the regulation does not provide sanctions or warnings for this type of action: “It is not up to us to moderate or manage this type of thing. We have to give the best performance of the whole weekend. Marc wanted to attack because he thought it was right to stay behind me and I thought it was right not to make him attack, because more often than not he throws himself in and it didn’t seem wise to let me cheat myself out of an additional position in qualifying.”
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Franco Morbidelli, Yamaha Factory Racing
“This is our point of view, then it’s up to others to manage these behaviors on the track, with our comments and our moderation,” continues Morbidelli, who supports the fact that we need to discuss this aspect. “We need to decide whether it is a dangerous, ugly or beautiful thing. Often in Moto3 it is dangerous because there are large groups, swarms. In MotoGP there are fewer bikes, let’s say one-to-one. We should talk about it if we want to moderate this, but for now in MotoGP we have seen it being done.”
In the Sprint, Morbidelli came close to the top 10, taking 11th place. However, he believes that the qualifying episode did not influence the outcome: “Certainly being there playing with Marc didn’t help me to do the best I could in qualifying. Maybe I would have passed or maybe not, if I had only thought about making time. But in any case I’m more upset about Friday, for not having passed into Q2 by 84 thousandths than for the missed opportunities on Saturday.”
“Tomorrow is a completely different story. Starting from behind we will need to make another good start, we will need more good first laps, we will need to be aggressive and try to give everything in the first laps to gain as much as possible and be able to maintain the pace and speed in the race. Let’s see if we can do it”, concludes the Yamaha rider.
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