MotoGp, VR46: Franco Morbidelli candid about his difficulties at Phillip Island

Friday with two faces the one experienced by the Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team: if Fabio Di Giannantonio finished the pre-qualifying session in third place showing great confidence with the Phillip Island circuit, the same cannot be said of Franco Morbidelli, who in FP1 was protagonist despite himself of a crash in Turn 1 and in FP2 was not able to get the direct pass for Saturday’s Q2.

“It was a difficult Friday – Morbidelli confirmed at the end of the day -, I struggled throughout the day and I was never fast. At the moment, the main problem is stability: I have a lot of movement on the bike and I can’t bring the speed I want in corner entry. In FP1 I crashed, it was a high-speed crash, but fortunately everything went well”.

“It happened at the beginning of the session, on the third lap: maybe I was a little too excited to be at Phillip Island, a track that I love – then admitted the centaur of the team founded by Valentino Rossi, who rides a Ducati Desmosedici GP24 unlike teammate Di Giannantonio, who rides a GP25 -. We have to work this afternoon and this evening to improve ahead of tomorrow”.

Vicinely in the top five of the overall standings (the gap to Pedro Acosta is just eight points), Franco Morbidelli is having a more than satisfactory season in terms of results, managing to score points consistently in both the Sprint Races and the long races on Sunday. In Indonesia, however, he has been far from the leaders: seventh in the Sprint, eighth in the GP.