Morbidelli will spend the winter in rehabilitation

November 23, 2021

This has been a year of ups and downs for the Italian rider, more on a psychological level than in terms of results, given that his circumstances, both physical and technical, were never the best.

Franco Morbidelli, runner-up in the world in 2020 with a Yamaha theoretically inferior to those of his brand-mates, found himself even more alone in 2021, given that the Japanese manufacturer redoubled its efforts in the official team and left the Sepang Racing Team aside ( SRT), their satellite formation.

It soon became clear that Yamaha’s priorities were not going to make his progression any easier, and that stalemate was further exacerbated when he had no choice but to go under the knife for surgery on his left knee, which had been giving him headaches for some time.

The intervention, in the anterior cruciate ligament, was carried out on June 25, the Friday of the Dutch Grand Prix, and finally forced him to miss five tests, and not return until the first of the two appointments that were held in San Marino. , almost three months after surgery.

When he returned to the track, the Roman rider did so dressed in the suit of the official Yamaha team and as a teammate of Fabio Quartararo, in the vacancy left by Maverick Viñales when he terminated his contract.

Despite having the best material available, Morbidelli’s physical limitations, especially in terms of mobility in that left knee, and the lack of training, prevented him from offering his best version: since his return he only scored points in two of the five races in which he participated, with the eleventh place achieved in the last appointment, that of Valencia, as the best result.

After the course and the subsequent test, in Jerez, Morbidelli acknowledged that he plans to focus throughout the winter on recovering the flexibility in his knee, in order to be able to appear at the Sepang test, at the beginning of February 2022, in full condition. His determination is such that he has even decided to miss the traditional 100 Kilometers that are held every winter at Valentino Rossi’s ‘Ranch’.

“Rehabilitation will be the main axis of the winter for me. I’m going to try to recover all the functionality of the knee, and we’ll see if I can. There shouldn’t be any problem in that sense,” said Morbidelli, who at all times accepted the deadlines that required an intervention as complicated as the one that was performed.

“Before the operation, the knee had no ligament and that’s why it was released. I just had to be careful off the court or when playing football, not to do what kind of movements. Now, the knee is pissed off. It’s an operation that requires time. I feel worse than before, worse than in Le Mans, for example. But I hope that with time everything will return to its place; there should be no problem, “concluded the #21.