Interview: Franco Morbidelli
Franco Morbidelli probably has the coolest head in the 350-km/h world of MotoGP, but his calm demeanour conceals a difficult past
We chat with Petronas SRT Yamaha’s MotoGP sensation about goings-on and his take of circumstances
Iowe one of the more embarrassing moments of the three decades I have spent chasing motoGP riders around the world to franco morbidelli. It was all my fault, obviously, but the way he dealt with my idiocy showed the mark of the man.
this happened during the post-qualifying media conference at last year’s teruel Grand Prix at Aragon, the 11th of the 14-race 2020 championship. morbidelli’s teammate, fabio Quartararo, went into the race four points behind championship leader Joan mir, while morbidelli was sixth overall, a further 28 points down.
‘franco,’ I asked. ‘If you get the chance to help fabio, because he needs every point he can get while you’re not really in the battle for the championship, will you help him?’
morbidelli smiled and answered my question with another question. ‘why am I not in the battle for the championship?’
I laughed nervously. ‘Um, erm, well, I’ve looked at the numbers and… well, I suppose you’ve answered my question.’ morbidelli calmly continued to make his point. ‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t help fabio if he needs help to win the championship and I’m out of the championship battle, but I’m not out of it yet, so what’s the point of helping him?’
the next day morbidelli went out and destroyed everyone to take his second motoGP victory, while Quartararo only finished eighth. A month later, morbidelli finished the 2020 championship second overall, only 13 points behind new world champion Joan mir.
Some riders might have taken my question as an insult and got angry with me, but morbidelli remained polite, reasonable, and good-humoured throughout. Because that is what he is like — cool, calm, and collected.
‘the best way is to stay calm,’ says the 26-year-old Italian during our interview.
‘It helps you to see more around you and to judge what’s around you with more precision. maybe, I’d like to yell or smash up the garage after a bad race, but I understood pretty early in my career that this isn’t the right way to go forward.
‘of course, it’s also my way of being. I’m not a crazy person at all; I’m generally quite quiet. when I’m at races, I try to stay even more calm because that helps me perform better and that’s the most important thing.’
morbidelli’s placid, philosophical attitude to life may be part of his nature, but events have also played a part in forging his character, which is so unlike that of most adrenalinecharged youngsters chasing GP glory.
morbidelli grew up in rome, the son of a Brazilian mother and an Italian father, a former racer who owned a motorcycle shop. At school he suffered racist abuse because his skin was not the same colour as the other kids’.
when he was 18, his father, Luigi, committed suicide. It is impossible for anyone to even begin to imagine how such a thing might affect them, but, perhaps, it destroys you unless somehow you do not let it.
morbidelli did not succumb. he kept focused on the road ahead, achieving his first major success, the european 600 Superstock title, a few months later.
five years earlier, his family had moved from rome to tavullia, so he could train with Valentino rossi. morbidelli’s dad and rossi’s dad had raced together in the 1970s and 1980s, hence the connection.
‘Valentino started giving me advice about riding,’ remembers morbidelli. ‘then he started asking me what championship I was doing and what I was going to do next year, then he started watching some of my races and started giving me more advice.’
In 2013, rossi established his Vr46 riders Academy. the idea was to find young Italians whom rossi could support in their endeavour. At the same time, these youngsters would train with rossi, helping him stay sharp.
morbidelli was the first rider to officially sign with the Vr46 Academy, but by then rossi was more than just a mentor to him. the teenager had lost his dad and needed looking after. rossi told him, ‘If you need me, I’m here.’
‘the story of my life is trying to overcome difficult times,’ morbidelli adds. ‘It’s happened in the past and it will happen in the future. I hope to be hard enough and ready enough to overcome all the difficult moments I will face.
‘Vale and I talk a lot with each other. we spend a lot of time together — training, chilling out after races, doing the usual stuff friends do. we talk about our tough moments, which helps you get through them. I think we are lucky that we’ve had more times to celebrate together than to share misery.’
whenever I see morbidelli on top of the podium after winning a GP, his face seems to change for a moment. the ecstatic grin disappears, replaced by a look of sombre reflection, as if he is wishing his dad were there. this makes his achievements all the greater.
while rossi drifts through into the twilight of his career, morbidelli leads the charge of the Vr46 protégés. In 2017, he became the first Vr46 rider to win a world championship, the moto2 title, the next year he became the first Vr46 rider in motoGP, and last season he became the first Vr46 rider to win a motoGP race.
‘this fills me with pride but it doesn’t mean I’m the best rider in Vr46 because Vr46 is full of great talents.’
he is not wrong. other Vr46 riders in motoGP include factory Ducati man Pecco
Bagnaia, rossi’s half-brother, Luca marini, and moto2 riders marco Bezzecchi and Celestino Vietti.
morbidelli fully acknowledges the crucial role Vr46 has played in his career. ‘I wouldn’t be here without them,’ he says.
During his first motoGP season, morbidelli rode honda’s hard-to-handle rC213V. In 2019, he signed with the new Petronas Sepang Yamaha team, alongside Quartararo. that year the french rookie dazzled, giving marc marquez a hard time at several races, while morbidelli steadily worked his way up to speed aboard his YZr-m1.
that is why Yamaha kept him on a 2019 bike last year, while Quartararo was promoted to latest-spec factory machinery. this spring Quartararo was further promoted to Yamaha’s factory squad and morbidelli stayed at Petronas, still riding 2019 m1s.
It is a strange situation. Last year morbidelli bettered Quartararo and factory teammate, maverick Viñales, in the championship but he is racing two-year-old bikes while the factory men have new-and-improved 2021 machines.
morbidelli’s chassis are so old that his renowned crew chief, ramon forcada, swaps them around, so they do not exceed their intended mileage life.
‘we try to race with the fresher ones — once we see the kilometres are getting high with one frame, we switch to another,’ explains morbidelli.
Is he angry about this? of course, he is, but he is clever, so he rationalizes the anger and magically transforms it into better results.
In fact, there are some upsides to riding the same bike for three seasons.
I’ve ridden this bike for so long that I know it so well. from a technical point of view, maybe it’s not an advantage, but the more you ride the same bike, the more you feel every small thing that’s happening, so now I can make saves that I couldn’t have made two or three years ago.’
morbidelli’s strengths as a rider are smoothness, consistency, and intelligence. he is not the kind of rider — like marquez and, perhaps, Quartararo — who can make a motorcycle do things it should not be able to do. Instead, he works with forcada to extend the bike’s limits through honing the set-up
‘When I’m at races, I try to stay even more calm because that helps me perform better and that’s the most important thing’
and then rides to those limits while adapting his technique accordingly.
‘I’m a really flowy rider and I really like to maximize every movement in every aspect of my riding,’ he says. ‘that’s what I try to do once I feel good with the settings.’
And that is exactly what he did when he won last September’s teruel GP. Indeed, he was so flowy during the race that he had a kind of transcendental experience, like wayne rainey at Suzuka in 1991 and Ayrton Senna at monaco in 1988. Coincidentally, psychologists name this mental state “flow”.
‘the race really was a trip,’ said morbidelli after that victory. ‘meaning, how can I say…?’
‘You felt pretty high?’ prompted another journalist.
‘Yes, I felt great. It wasn’t a journey; it was a trip.’
while morbidelli was racing for last year’s
motoGP title, there were bigger things happening in the world, such as CoVID-19 and the “Black Lives matter” movement. while formula 1 king Lewis hamilton made BLm his rallying cry in f1, there was hardly a murmur about BLm in the motoGP paddock. Apart from morbidelli.
his experience of racist bullying had a profound effect on him and helped make him be the man he is today.
‘when I was at school, I was bullied because the colour of my skin wasn’t usual — I’m not black but I’m not white either. the bullying didn’t make me feel good at all. I really felt the need to be accepted and I wasn’t accepted at all.
‘the lesson I learned very quickly was that it’s not nice being pushed aside, so I try never to do that to anyone, whether in racing or outside.’
morbidelli made his feelings clear at last year’s San marino GP, where he wore a BLmthemed helmet. he is a big movie fan, so his misano lid featured him as one of the star characters in director Spike Lee’s 1989 film,
Do the Right Thing, which deals with racism in new York.
the helmet caused quite a stir. It also worked wonders for morbidelli who went out on Sunday and won his first motoGP race. he wore it again at the next race, with Spike Lee also featuring, after the director had heard about the helmet and got in touch.
‘It was great to talk to such an icon of culture like Spike,’ he says. ‘I will always remember the chat we had and it gave me a lot of positive energy.’
the first time I interviewed morbidelli back in 2017, he told me his favourite thing was sitting on the sofa at home, watching movies and sport. But things have changed since then.
‘when I went to motoGP in 2018, I learned that a machine can be so powerful and that the performance of the tyres can be so high, so I learned there’s really no limit to the performance of a machine on two wheels. In 2019, I learned that commitment is really the key to perform well in motoGP and last year I learned that just being fast isn’t enough to win the championship.’
motoGP is currently so ridiculously close at the moment — the top 10 sometimes covered by less than 10 seconds at the chequered flag — that riders have to work harder, have less fun, and constantly narrow the focus of their lives if they want to stay in the game.
‘I’ve had to sacrifice my sofa time for training and commitment,’ he says with a grin. ‘And now I need to sacrifice that time a bit more because the level in motoGP is so high, it’s unbelievable. You cannot lose one inch or lose focus for one-tenth. It’s very difficult but it’s engaging and it’s nice to be a part of it.’
morbidelli is a contender for this year’s motoGP title, despite a disastrous start in Qatar where his m1’s holeshot device (which lowers the bike by pumping down the rear shock to reduce wheelies and thereby allow more acceleration) would not disengage, so he rode the whole race with the rear end down and the front up, like a helicopter.
most riders would have ridden into pit-lane and thrown a few things around the garage, but not morbidelli. he completed the race and did not even finish last. once again, this was his philosophy at work.
‘I just tried to stay focused on my job and hang on tight. we had a technical issue, so all I could do was maintain my concentration and give my maximum.
‘If I’d had a bad race like that last year or two years ago, I’d be much sadder and more daunted. this time I was upset, but I’m always looking ahead, so my mind doesn’t spend too much time thinking about what happened in Qatar.
‘this year, I have more knowledge of myself, more knowledge of what I can do and more self-trust. of course, I’ve got more pressure, but it’s a good kind of pressure and it’s a well-earned pressure which I’d like to have for many more years.’
As rossi’s sun sets, morbidelli’s rises.
‘The level in MotoGP is so high, it’s unbelievable. You cannot lose one inch or lose focus for onetenth. It’s very difficult but it’s engaging’