The bodily attrition inherent in top-level bike racing signifies that each season in MotoGP there’s at the very least one rider whose marketing campaign carries a large asterisk.
In 2024 that asterisk belonged to Franco Morbidelli’s season, although Morbidelli, in contrast to almost half of his friends, ran in each dash and each grand prix race.
A foul crash throughout street bike coaching at Portimao triggered a mind damage and fully wrote off a pre-season that the Italian was purported to spend not solely moving into racing form, however studying a Ducati bike completely international to him mainly from scratch after his change from Yamaha.
So within the early rounds there was actually no approach of understanding how one was purported to really feel about Morbidelli’s performances – was he impressing, was he underwhelming, may it even be truthful in any respect to speak by way of ‘impressing’ and ‘underwhelming’ given the traumatic mind damage he’d suffered?
Morbidelli ended the season with a clear invoice of well being however the image of his 12 months did not precisely clear up. In fact, assessing a MotoGP rider’s efficiency is educated guesswork at the perfect of instances, nevertheless it turns into a random quantity generator while you take an exterior issue like this and attempt to by some means account for it.
That is the way you get my colleague Simon Patterson putting Morbidelli eighth in his end-of-season evaluation for The Race, whereas I had him sixteenth in my very own rating.
“A head damage is one thing delicate,” mentioned Morbidelli on the Barcelona finale when requested by The Race if he was nonetheless feeling the after-effects of what occurred at the beginning of the 12 months.
“I’ve nothing…I imply, I introduced nothing, no everlasting harm in my mind. So, yeah, I am OK on that aspect.”
However is it nonetheless impacting the efficiency? Is it nonetheless, by advantage of the time misplaced early within the 12 months, robbing him of the prospect to tackle Pecco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin?
“We caught up huge time. However not fully,” he added.
“We did not attain Pecco and Jorge’s stage other than Misano 1 [the first of two weekends at the venue]. However other than Misano 1 we have been both near them or a bit additional, so due to this fact near P3 or P6 on the worst. However we by no means have been the reference this 12 months. Other than Misano 1 and a few periods.
“So, what we’re aiming to do for subsequent 12 months is to step this factor up and attempt to be the reference.”
We at the very least received some readability on the type of Ducati rider Morbidelli is at the moment monitoring to be within the second a part of 2024. For all of the uncertainties of his marketing campaign the efficiency sample appeared ever clearer: there was a marked enchancment in single-lap tempo, and the occasional capacity to combine with the opposite GP24s up entrance, but it at all times seemed too tall an order come Sunday’s full-distance race.
The longer-run race tempo let him down persistently, which Morbidelli put all the way down to “a mix of every little thing” and pinpointed as a prime precedence to enhance in 2025.
“It at all times appears that I’ve received the pace however at all times lacking one thing in a race,” he mentioned. “In all probability I have to work higher with the crew, work higher for arranging the setting and the issues for the race.”
In fact, the administration over a race distance is one thing that feels intuitively linked to expertise and information reserves. And this isn’t the primary time MotoGP has seen a Yamaha-to-Ducati transition the place a rider shortly brings single-lap efficiency to an appropriate stage but struggles to keep up it over distances.
That was precisely the sample Jorge Lorenzo’s first season at Ducati adopted again in 2017, and by 2018 Lorenzo – aided by adjustments to the bike – was lastly a potent all-round menace, although was shortly subdued by accidents.
That Ducati, after all, wasn’t this Ducati, the Ducati Lorenzo helped make – the extra versatile, stronger bundle that some riders say is especially notable for suiting a wide range of driving types. However Lorenzo additionally hadn’t suffered a mind damage coming into his first Ducati season.
Ducati riders by common 2024 race place (grands prix solely)
Pecco Bagnaia – 2.1
Jorge Martin – 2.3
Marc Marquez – 4.7
Enea Bastianini – 5.7
Franco Morbidelli (2nd half of 2024) – 7.0
Fabio Di Giannantonio – 8.5
Alex Marquez – 8.7
Franco Morbidelli (complete) – 9.1
Marco Bezzecchi – 9.6
Franco Morbidelli (1st half of 2024) – 11.1
Morbidelli’s personal evaluation of how a lot the damage setback price him, performance-wise, is an fascinating one.
“I misplaced some factors,” he provides. “I feel I may’ve fought for P5 for the championship. Not P4, not P3, neither P2 or P1. However P5, yeah, I may’ve fought for it.”
In a vacuum, with a motorcycle just like the Ducati GP24, fifth is clearly not sufficient (nor due to this fact his precise place of ninth). However we do not actually know what to anticipate from riders making the change from one other producer to a Ducati lately; the one really latest instance is Marc Marquez, and he, as at all times, is a particular case, and on an older-spec bike.
There have been moments in 2024 the place it felt like Morbidelli was really kicking on, but additionally moments the place it felt like stagnation. And in any of these latter moments you inevitably needed to ask – is it the damage and the misplaced time, or is he bumping up towards some extra elementary limitation?
Solely the upcoming season – within the acquainted confines of VR46 Ducati, crew-chiefed by Matteo Flamigni, who Morbidelli described as “one of many first heroes for me on this sport” – will actually assist us perceive issues higher.
As a result of, sure, ‘did Franco Morbidelli have an honest 2024 or was he poor?’ isn’t that necessary a query in its personal proper – however clearing up the reply to it is going to go hand in hand with figuring out what the three-time grand prix winner’s long-term MotoGP future truly appears to be like like.
