Qualifying in 16th in Portugal, he was 14th in the sprint and the grand prix, while Quartararo was 10th and eighth. Morbidelli’s 2023 season didn’t get off to a flying start either. Already, there have been links between Yamaha and Jorge Martin, who admitted in France that his current Ducati contract with Pramac does have a clause in it that stipulates he can break free a year early should a factory team offer him a deal. Unsurprisingly, coming into 2023, Morbidelli was facing much more pressure as his contract comes up for renewal at the end of the year. Morbidelli believes he isn't as far away from Quartararo as results suggest in 2023 Over the course of the season, Morbidelli’s deficit in qualifying to Quartararo was 0.798s. In the standings, Morbidelli ended up with just 49 points while Quartararo had 248. In his first full season at the factory Yamaha team, Morbidelli beat his world champion team-mate Fabio Quartararo just once in a grand prix (when both riders finished), with a best result of seventh in the wet Indonesian GP.
It was a great evolution and some things got lost along the way.” So, it was a revolution the one Yamaha did between 19 and 20 because top speed was a great issue and we need to follow that. I mean, I’m sure we changed a lot and some big things got worse between the 19 bike and the 20 bike, which was a completely new philosophy and a completely new structure of bike. That’s the situation we need to flip over. That’s just how it looks, how it feels when you’re on track.
“My feeling is that our opponents have improved more than what we did,” he says of Yamaha’s lack of progress.
He then worked with Silvano Galbusera at the factory squad before being partnered with Patrick Primmer for 2022 onwards. To boot, he started 2021 with Ramon Forcada at SRT. When he came back at the San Marino GP as a factory Yamaha rider, he was still well below 100% fitness while also trying to learn a bike that was a step of two years – and a big one, at that. Morbidelli suffered a knee injury midway through 2021 which forced him onto the sidelines for five rounds. So, the first half of the season in 2022 took time to really get to the best shape.” “If I look at my team-mate, I see that the performances – especially in the important sessions, which are races and qualifying – are not that different” Franco Morbidelli So, we had one other change and I was getting back to my top shape. But then, in 2022 the crew chief changed again. The second half of the championship that I did in 2021 was a good adaptation, or a good taste, of what I would have faced in 2022. Analysing why it’s gone so wrong over the last two years, Morbidelli said: “I think I had many changes between 20.
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