Morbidelli: Q1 is a battlefield where you can get trapped

Franco Morbidelli’s eventful second day at the MotoGP Grand Prix of Spain saw him take second on the grid for Sunday’s race. 

The Italian twice had lap times deleted from FP3, but the second of those eliminated him from direct access to Q2 and resulted in ‘a safety issue’ according to the 2020 title runner-up. 

Morbidelli and the Petronas Yamaha team were notified of the second lap time being deleted just before FP4, which was over two hours after the morning practice session finished. 

And while Morbidelli agreed that taking away the two laps was correct, the timing was not: "It was right to cancel both my lap times this morning, but maybe it wasn't right the timing because I got informed really late and we didn’t really have the tyres. 

"We got informed right before FP4 so there was a little bit of a mess in the pit box. We didn’t have enough tyres so it was a bit messy. But finally, we were able to overcome it quite well. I was able to be very fast in Q1 and decently fast in Q2.

"But we faced a safety issue this afternoon. Luckily the temperature was high enough to ride medium and soft, so we had more choice. 

"If the temperature would have been low, and allowed us just to ride with one tyre spec, then we would have been in big trouble from a safety aspect."

All this meant Morbidelli's first run in Q1 was on the medium tyre before he fitted the soft rear to eventually progress. 

Still, Morbidelli was anything but stressed about the situation and called Q1 a ‘battlefield’ that was ‘engaging’ and ultimately ‘nice’ to be involved in. 

Morbidelli added: "Q1 is a battlefield where you can get trapped. You have to go exactly with the commitment that you had if you were in Q2. 

"The level in MotoGP is so high, it’s unbelievable! You cannot lose anything, you cannot lose one inch, you cannot lose the focus for even one tenth. It’s difficult but it is engaging and it is nice."