After more than two years, Franco Morbidelli says goodbye to Monster Energy Yamaha at the Valencia MotoGP. It was a bumpy journey, in which he never managed to win or reach the podium, coinciding with a period where the manufacturer was struggling competitively.
The Italian said he approaches this round with the intention of enjoying it to the fullest, without thinking about the future: ‘It’s an important weekend, it’s my last race with Yamaha. I’m going to enjoy every second, savor every moment, and it’s important to have a good weekend to fully enjoy our last race together. Then, a new chapter awaits me, but we’ll talk about that on Monday‘.
Instigated to list the best moments with the Yamaha factory team, Morbidelli stated: ‘There were definitely some good races, like Argentina this year; some good recoveries from bad qualifications, like in Sepang, and others that I don’t remember. But I remember many overtakes to recover from bad starting positions and that is good. That’s it, these are the highlights’.
For Morbidelli, this was the season where he was closest to being able to fight with Fabio Quartararo to be the best of Yamaha: ‘This year I felt I could have a chance to be the best Yamaha, and honestly in the first half of the season we did well and were in the fight. But in the second half of the season… maybe the announcement [of the departure], maybe some other things that happened within the team, and so on. Furthermore, I think Fabio was able to do a fantastic job in this second part of the season, he was practically flawless. We know we have many difficulties to get into Q2 and he was able to go directly to Q2 from Friday. He always managed to do just enough to reach those top ten positions and that made him have a devilish second half of the season. And we were not able to get directly into Q2 in this second part of the season and we suffered because of it. So, the gap increased a bit more, but I felt I could have a chance and I feel that the speed, especially in race pace, is always there’.
