MotoGP | Morbidelli: “I owe everything to VR46, racing with them would close the circle”

He hadn’t been seen in such good shape for a long time, but the Franco Morbidelli of 2020, the one who had caressed the world championship dream with the Yamaha of the then Petronas team, returned forcefully to the fore in the German Grand Prix. The Pramac rider has shown great growth in this first half of the season and found himself fighting for the podium positions, despite having finished the race in fifth position.

“A version of me that hasn’t been seen for a while,” the Pramac rider told the media once the race was over. “I’m happy that it’s back out. I’ve been there for a few races, seeing the podium and being able to get there. But this one a little more. At a certain point I thought that I had to win! So good, it was a positive weekend that everyone needs.”

Managing the tires was the key to getting to the end fighting and aiming for a good position. Morbidelli pushed hard, arriving at the last laps with practically finished tires: “When I passed Pecco I quickly saw +0.8 and I understood that he was managing. I saw that I was arriving at that speed on Jorge and I understood that they were both managing. But I also wanted to see what would happen, but the tires were finished”.

He dreamed of victory, he almost came close to it. In the early stages of the race he found himself in second position, chasing the leader Jorge Martin (before he ended up in the gravel) and ahead of the reigning champion Pecco Bagnaia. In the midst of the world championship fight, Soft perhaps he had too many qualms and preferred not to become a referee of the championship, thinking carefully about the overtakings to be made.

“I thought about it a bit,” he reveals. “When I was behind Pecco and Jorge, I had a bit of awe. Not too much, this is not the time to have that kind of fear, but I had it. I will work on this to free myself from this thing, because the history of the championship is still long. Today I found myself asking myself ‘when will I pass them?’. I tried to always be as clean as possible with both Pecco and Jorge. I didn’t get to him, but as I approached with that speed I asked myself ‘how will I pass him? Where will I pass him?’”.

At Sachsenring we saw a combative Morbidelli, protagonist and constantly in the top positions. The Roman did not hold back even with overtaking, he was in a brawl with Enea Bastianini, who overtook him in the final, and with Marc Marquez, with whom he had contact at the first corner in a duel: “Marc? I didn’t see him. I arrived long, I thought there was no one, but at a certain point he was there. He is very good at diving in at the end, but nothing happened, so it went well”.

In a weekend where there was no shortage of spectacle and twists, there was also room for the market: Morbidelli is one of the riders who has not yet chosen (or revealed) his future, but everything suggests that in 2025 he will wear the colors of the VR46 team.

“I would definitely like it, it would be the closing of a circle,” he explains. “Racing for Vale would be a fantastic story. They are the ones who made me the rider I am today and the person I am today. I owe so much to the whole VR group, not just Vale. Practically everything. Being able to win again this year with Pramac would be fantastic and doing it with VR46 I don’t even want to think about it yet!”