Franco Morbidelli | Photo credits: SIC
After an intense weekend in the Masaryk Circuit, the Czech Grand Prix has finally closed its veil and it was a stellar day for PETRONAS Yamaha SRT rider Franco Morbidelli. The Italian rider claimed his first-ever MotoGP podium at the Automotodrom Brno after coming in second place. Teammate Fabio Quartararo, on the other hand, finished his run at seventh place.
En route to his podium triumph, the tricky conditions were not an obstacle for Morbidelli. His result today makes it ten podiums for the team since their MotoGP debut last year. The Italian bolted from the starting line and continued to make a series of fast laps. As Brad Binder started to close, Franco decided that battling him wasn’t worth the risk of crashing. Making no mistakes and maintaining what tyre grip was available, Morbidelli’s wise decision saw him able to cross the line second and take his first-ever MotoGP podium. He also moves into third in the championship standings, eleven points behind fellow Yamaha rider Maverick Viñales.
PETRONAS Yamaha SRT continues to the next race, having increased the gap at the top of the teams’ championship, which takes place next weekend at the Red Bull Ring – Spielberg, Austria (14-16 August).
“It was a very unpredictable race and we are extremely happy with Franco’s second-place finish. We send our congratulations to Brad Binder and KTM as they did an amazing job. It’s a great day for Franco and we’re also fairly happy with Fabio’s result as well. Of course, we need to evaluate what happened but overall we are very happy.
The Moto3 race was also an unusual one and we were hoping for a slightly better result from John. However, it was a commendable effort from him and he rode a smart race to maintain his position in the championship. I’m pleased with KIP for finishing the race, given the injury that he sustained during qualifying yesterday.
Unfortunately in Moto2, we had a technical problem with Jake’s bike, which ended his race early. With Xavi, we really need to look at how we can improve because we expect more from him. We’ll have to wait and see how we go to Austria.
“I’m so happy, overwhelmed actually to have finished on the podium today! It was a bit of a strange race because I couldn’t push at 100% all race. At the beginning I was going quite fast, my pace was better than I expected and I was pulling away from the pack. I could see Brad catching though and knew he might be in a better position than me as he’d got the medium tyre.”
“I didn’t try to fight because I just wanted to make sure I got the bike to the end of the race and got my first podium. Certainly, I have to say thanks to all the PETRONAS Yamaha SRT, my crew, Yamaha and all the people at home supporting me. Now we rest for three days and go to Austria with a great injection of confidence and knowledge that we can be strong. I’m really looking forward to it.
We suffered a lot in the race today from the first lap until the last, so we need to analyse this to see what we can improve to make sure it doesn’t happen again. We struggled with tyre wear on Friday, but then we improved it during FP4 so I wasn’t expecting the tyres to be as bad as they were today. I’m not really happy with seventh today but we still earned nine points towards the championship and actually we increased our lead there. Although I’m not thinking about the championship, I am just taking each race one at a time. Of course, I always want to be on the podium, but it was nice to see Franco on there today – congratulations Franco! – and we will see what we can do in Austria.