FRANCO MORBIDELLI ADMITS HE FEARED LEAVING MOTOGP AFTER TOUGH 2018 SEASON

Franco Morbidelli is set to bring the curtain down on his MotoGP career at his home Italian round at Misano this weekend, with the VR46 event adding extra emotion to a farewell that has been hanging over his season for months. Morbidelli has been officially confirmed as leaving Valentino Rossi’s team, and WorldSBK champion-elect Nicolò Bulega is set to take over in 2027. While the full details of Morbidelli’s next step have not been formally announced, he is widely expected to effectively swap seats by moving to the Aruba.it Ducati squad in WorldSBK next season.

Ahead of the Misano race, Morbidelli described the circuit as something special for Italian riders. “Misano is always a special GP, for all the Italian riders,” he said on Thursday. “This year is extra special for me because it's going to be my last one in MotoGP, so I hope I can do well this weekend.”

This goodbye comes after a period in which Morbidelli’s future has been uncertain. His best dry-weather result this season has been seventh in Catalunya, but the bigger storyline has been whether he would remain in MotoGP beyond the current chapter. Morbidelli traced that anxiety back to his rookie year in 2018, when the results simply didn’t arrive.

“I was scared of leaving MotoGP in 2018,” Morbidelli admitted. “When I joined MotoGP, the results were not coming. So when results don't come, and especially when you're in the first year, you get scared. But I learned over the years to put fear aside.”

He explained that the transition from Moto2 to MotoGP brought a different level of competition than he had expected. After returning to that early period, Morbidelli said he was “very young” and had arrived as reigning Moto2 world champion, expecting a certain level of performance. Instead, he found that “the level in MotoGP is totally different.” He added a perspective shift that comes with age and experience: “I was young. I was 23. Now I'm 31. I'm not old, but I'm more experienced.”

According to Morbidelli, the biggest change is how he approaches the job. “What aspect have I changed the most? I became more and more a professional and a dedicated athlete to my sport. While when I was 23, it was all a game.”

When asked to identify his most difficult season, he pointed to 2022. “My most difficult was 2022, I would say,” he said, before adding, “And let's see, but maybe this one.”

Morbidelli’s MotoGP journey has included both highs and lows. After leaving the early uncertainty of his debut campaign behind, he was signed by Petronas Yamaha, where he secured three grand prix wins, including his first MotoGP victory at Misano. That success helped him finish runner-up in the 2020 MotoGP World Championship. However, his later promotion to the factory Yamaha team—taking the place of Maverick Viñales—was followed by a career-low 19th in the 2022 standings.

As he looks toward the next stage of his career, Morbidelli also reflected on the VR46 Riders Academy and how it is perceived. He said the Academy is often treated like a formal school or teaching group, but that is not how it functions in reality. “I think that the way the Academy is perceived - and for sure maybe it's also because of the name - is as a school and as a teaching group. It's not at all like that.”

Instead, Morbidelli described a group that trains and enjoys the sport together, with personalities that remain genuine. “As maybe you can see in some videos, we have fun together, we train together, we enjoy the best sport in the world together. And the way of being of somebody stays quite the same.” He added: “We are not homologated. We are ourselves. So if somebody is more of a playful guy, so he'd be. If someone is more of a serious guy, maybe like it was Pecco, a serious kid, we were kids, so he'd be.”

Morbidelli also noted his place in the Academy’s history, saying he became the first VR46 Riders Academy member to win a world championship and the first to claim a MotoGP victory.

With his move to WorldSBK, the remaining VR46 Academy riders in MotoGP will be Pecco Bagnaia, Marco Bezzecchi and Luca Marini. The transition is not limited to VR46: Jack Miller and Brad Binder are also moving from MotoGP to WorldSBK next season, underlining how significant the coming reshuffle will be for the paddock.