MotoGP | Morbidelli, where have you ended up? [RACING TITLES]

There was a young Italian rider, already world champion in Moto2, who ended his third season aboard a MotoGP in second place in the standings, after a second part of the championship lived as an absolute protagonist.

Read like this, and if we exclude what happened in 2022, it could easily be the story of Francesco Bagnaia, updated just twelve months ago. Luckily for Pecco, however, as well as for Ducati and Italian motorcycling, the last twelve months have archived a feat destined for contemporary history books.

And so, the one recited in the incipit of our Racing Titles this week remains, only, the story (so far) of Franco Morbidelli. The parallel with Bagnaia, three years younger than him, is only a relative starting point in a period in which we have often returned to talking about the "Soft", more for what the immediate future could reserve for him than for a good and invigorating dose of positive sensations.

In recent days, someone had even leaked the idea, as well as the news, of a possible retirement of the Italian-Brazilian driver, before the person directly involved promptly denied it, with the temperament and dialectic of someone on the street, in every sense , he still wants to travel a lot.

In fact, doubts about what Morbidelli's future could be remain, considering that his first full season as an official Yamaha rider ended in a technical disaster, also considering that the injury in mid-2021 risks leaving much physical waste more complex than one could imagine.

Furthermore, the performance of a motorbike in difficulty and behind the leaders of the class, added to a roster of suitors who have not spared parades and official appointments in the pits of the last race in Valencia, weigh heavily on the uncertainty in balance.

For now, Yamaha doesn't seem to have any doubts: next year one of the two official M1s will still be the sporting property of Franco Morbidelli, but the idea that it is something very close to a last call to revive a career remains a concrete evaluation, just as the bugaboo of having to remember with some regret the Franco Morbidelli who was and above all who could have been.

Fortunately, ours first and foremost, there is also the awareness that talent and tenacity are hard to wither and that these are certainly not lacking in the Morbido area. The immediate future will trace the natural course of things, and the hope is that it will be the right one to give us back a pilot that we all still have a great desire to experience.