If you’re looking for a forthright MotoGP opinion, Aleix Espargaro is your man. And the veteran Spaniard had something he needed to get off his chest.
Ahead of the recent Austrian Grand Prix, the 35-year-old Aprilia rider, who is retiring at the end of the year, was asked about the probability of Jack Miller retaining a seat on next year’s grid at the expense of a potential graduate from Moto2 despite the Australian being sacked by KTM after his worst season since 2016.
Espargaro’s eyes lit up, the typically rapid cadence of his conversation quickening.
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“I’m not going to comment on [Miller] because I would get into trouble,” Espargaro said.
“I get on well with Jack, we are neighbours [in Andorra]. I know he likes motorbikes much more than me, I’m very happy that he can still be here. But there’s a much worse case.”
The assembled press pack immediately knew what was coming.
“The case of [Franco] Morbidelli is worse,” Espargaro began.
“There is nothing wrong with Morbidelli staying in MotoGP, but when you have a winning bike for so many years in a row, and your teammates beat you every time … it doesn’t seem fair to me that you don’t give the opportunity to the young riders.
“When you have had many winning bikes and you don’t show anything, and they keep giving you options …”.
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That Espargaro would sink the boot into Morbidelli – the pair have a fractious history, culminating in Espargaro being fined 10,000 Euros and given a six-place grid penalty in Qatar last year for slapping the Italian after they collided in a practice season – was no surprise. But it begged the question; why, after a seven-year MotoGP career of relative mediocrity with one significant outlier, did Morbidelli’s seemingly inevitable retention on next year’s grid escape the scrutiny endured by Miller?
Morbidelli, riding for Pramac Racing on Ducati’s class-leading GP24 alongside teammate Jorge Martin, has been absolutely nowhere this season, with the caveat that he suffered a significant pre-season training injury that scuppered his chances to adjust to a new bike after coming across from Yamaha at the end of last year.
But his lack of presence at the sharp end on the same bike being ridden by the top three riders in the championship – Francesco Bagnaia, Martin and Bagnaia’s teammate Enea Bastianini – has been glaring and consistent with his recent past.
With Pramac Racing moving to Yamaha next year and Morbidelli showing no interest in returning to ride for a manufacturer he’d just left after five seasons, the Italian’s job prospects should have been scant – but as a graduate of Valentino Rossi’s renowned rider academy, the spot at Rossi’s VR46 Ducati team vacated by Aprilia-bound Marco Bezzecchi was never realistically going to anyone else.
Two days after Espargaro’s stinging criticism, Morbidelli’s 2025 deal to ride the same GP24 Ducati he’s laboured on all season for Rossi’s VR46 MotoGP outfit next year was announced with great fanfare and a social media splash by the team, and met with a collective shrug of the shoulders from those inside the sport.
Was an extension to his career deserved? On results, no. Was it always going to happen? Certainly.
HOW BAD HAS 2024 BEEN?
Before the criticism, a caveat.
Morbidelli’s planned pre-season adaptation to Ducati’s GP24 hadn’t even begun when the Italian crashed heavily on a Ducati sportbike at a track day in Portimao in February, knocking himself unconscious and being found trackside by Marc and Alex Marquez, just two of the many MotoGP riders in attendance shaking off some pre-season rust.
After a blood clot was found, concussion symptoms plagued him for weeks, and Morbidelli missed the pre-season tests in Malaysia and Qatar before arriving at the first race of the year in Doha in March massively undercooked and well off feeling 100 per cent, and having not ridden a bike for a month.
His struggles in the early rounds in Qatar and Portugal made sense but, as the accident receded in his rear-view, lingered. As Ducati’s GP24 started to flex its considerable muscle against the four riders on the previous year’s bike – let alone the other four manufacturers – Morbidelli became an afterthought at best.
PIT TALK PODCAST: In this week’s episode of ‘Pit Talk’, hosts Renita Vermeulen and Matt Clayton dissect the key moments from Round 11 in Austria, how Pecco Bagnaia was able to reclaim the championship lead over Jorge Martin, look at Marc Marquez’s charge after a horror start and assess Jack Miller’s weekend of promise that ended with a crash.
Now, 11 rounds into 2024, the stats paint a brutal comparative picture.
Morbidelli has finished as the worst of the GP24 riders in eight of the 11 Grands Prix – he crashed out of the other three – and in 10 of 11 sprints, not finishing the other one in Great Britain after he crashed with Bezzecchi soon after the start.
Fellow GP24 riders Bagnaia (seven Grand Prix wins, three sprint wins), Martin (two Grand Prix wins, four sprint wins) and Bastianini (one win in each format) have 13, 17 and seven podiums from 22 starts respectively; Morbidelli has a best Grand Prix result of fifth (Germany), a best sprint result of fourth (Spain, Italy), and has qualified inside the top six just twice (Italy, Germany).
Martin has outqualified Morbidelli at all 11 events; the only other rider to whitewash their teammate is GasGas rookie Pedro Acosta against fellow Spaniard Augusto Fernandez. Morbidelli’s deficit to the leading GP24 Ducati rider at each Grand Prix – the 2024 Ducati has won all but one of the 11 held – is occasionally respectable, but regularly massive.
Franco Morbidelli in 2024, and his deficit to the winner/leading GP24
Qatar: 18th, 24.641secs (Bagnaia, 1st)
Portugal: 18th, 52.362secs (Martin, 1st)
Americas: DNF (crashed from 10th on lap 8 of 20)
Spain: DNF (crashed from 12th on lap 18 of 25)
France: 7th, 9.868secs (Martin, 1st)
Catalunya: DNF (crashed from 6th on lap 18 of 24)
Italy: 6th, 9.890secs (Bagnaia, 1st)
Netherlands: 9th, 23.413secs (Bagnaia, 1st)
Germany: 5th, 5.557secs (Bagnaia, 1st)
Great Britain: 10th, 23.609secs (Bastianini, 1st)
Austria: 8th, 27.677secs (Bagnaia, 1st)
Riding arguably the most dominant single-season bike of the modern era, Morbidelli is 12th in the standings with 73 points; the other GP24 riders sit first (Bagnaia, 275 points), second (Martin, 270) and third (Bastianini, 214) respectively.
Marc and Alex Marquez, along with Fabio Di Giannantonio, are ahead of him in the standings on the superseded GP23; Bezzecchi, enduring a difficult season after winning three Grands Prix a year ago, is level with Morbidelli’s meagre points total.
Just once – when he spent 14 of the 30 laps inside the top three in Germany – has Morbidelli been in podium contention on a machine that, by the end of the season, may well win 95 per cent of the Grands Prix raced, based on current form and momentum.
A FAMILIAR TALE
Morbidelli’s underwhelming season has largely escaped the spotlight shone on Miller’s similarly-poor campaign because of his injury-affected lead-in, and – perhaps – because we’ve become accustomed to him becoming a rider with a big following, a reputation from his early days, and limited results.
Morbidelli – half-Italian, half-Brazilian, wholly cool – is everyone’s idea of what a motorcycle racer should look like, sound like, race like. Stylish on the bike and laconically insightful off it, he arrived in MotoGP in 2018 after winning the previous year’s Moto2 title and built steadily, firstly on a second-string Honda in 2018 before moving to Petronas Yamaha the next season and finishing 10th overall, despite being mostly upstaged by rookie teammate Fabio Quartararo.
The next year, 2020, was Morbidelli’s apex. From seemingly nowhere, the Italian became a title contender, winning three Grands Prix, taking five poles and pushing Suzuki’s Joan Mir all the way for the crown before Mir prevailed at the penultimate round in Valencia.
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It proved to be a false dawn, and – as time went on – proof that the 2020 season was anomalous on multiple levels. The global pandemic saw a 14-round calendar cobbled together at just nine tracks, all races held in Europe in front of no spectators. Marc Marquez, winner of the previous four world titles, badly damaged his right arm and missed all but one race. Aprilia rider Andrea Iannone was banned for doping, while five riders – Morbidelli among them – won their first MotoGP races, and Mir won the title with just one victory, which he’s not added to since.
A more normal season in 2021 saw the health bug hinder Morbidelli for the first time, a left knee injury sustained while training at Rossi’s ranch in Tavullia seeing him miss five races, and moved up to Yamaha’s factory outfit when he returned after the team sacked Maverick Vinales mid-season.
From second in 2020, he slid to 17th in ’21 as teammate Quartararo won the title – and 2022 was even worse after he laboured to 19th overall.
The following 2023 season saw one result of note (fourth in Argentina) but another sub-par 12th-place championship finish; halfway through last year, Honda’s Alex Rins was named as his replacement at Yamaha’s factory squad.
Johann Zarco’s departure from Ducati to Honda to replace Rins was announced soon after, and Morbidelli landed on his feet by signing with Pramac Ducati.
Season 2024, though, has followed a familiar pattern to every year since 2020, when he looked like a genuine frontrunner for years to come. Just once since that season – Spain 2021, when he finished third – has Morbidelli made his way onto a podium; he’s spent just 43 laps total inside the top three from 2021 onwards, and has outqualified his teammates over the past three years (Quartararo and Martin) just six times in 51 attempts.
Context, machinery and health notwithstanding, Miller’s record in that same period – three Grand Prix wins, 13 podiums, 106 laps in the lead out of 412 laps inside the top three – makes for stark comparison.
CAN HE TURN IT AROUND?
Momentum – or complete lack thereof – aside, Morbidelli is gifted enough and young enough to make the most of his Rossi-gifted lifeline. Germany this season provided proof of concept.
With Martin, Bagnaia and Marc Marquez engaging in a fierce battle up front, the Italian inserted himself into a place we’ve rarely seen him in years, fighting with Marquez and giving as good as he got to the most aggressive rider on the grid, Marquez breaking the screen on his GP23 Ducati after contact with an unyielding Morbidelli.
It wasn’t a podium as he slid behind both Marquez brothers and Bastianini to fifth, but it made him realise what he’d been missing.
“A version of me that we haven’t seen in a while, I’m glad it came back out,” he said.
“I’ve been there for a few races now, seeing the podium and getting closer, but this one a little bit more. At one point I thought I had to win! So, good. It was a positive weekend that everyone needed.
“It feels great, it feels amazing, being there in such an attack position. When I’ve been there in the past two years it was always in defensive mode, while today was in attack mode. It’s much nicer, much more my style.”
After his Sachsenring cameo, nondescript Grands Prix at Silverstone (10th) and Spielberg (eighth after another clash with Marc Marquez, this time on the opening lap) immediately followed, leaving the paddock wondering if Germany was yet another false dawn for a rider who has proven he can do it, but hasn’t done so regularly for so long that you wonder if ever will again.
If Miller – somewhat justifiably – cops heat for his passport being a significant factor in staying on the grid, Morbidelli shouldn’t escape it for simply being a talented but underperforming Rossi protégé who was out of work and conveniently filled a vacancy.
While Espargaro is adamant he knows whose situation is worse, what’s not in question is that both Morbidelli and Miller will have chances to rewrite the final chapters of their careers their recent results probably shouldn’t have provided, chances that prevent a rider younger than a pair of 29-year-olds from ascending.
Whether that’s right or wrong is debatable; the one thing for certain is that, this time, it’ll surely be their last.