Franky Morbidelli’s progression to full fitness with his Monster Energy Yamaha took a positive step forward in Indonesia.

Having spent the best part of 2021 recovering from knee surgery, Morbidelli’s progression from the 2019 to 2022 YZR-M1, as he replaces Maverick Viñales in the factory team, has been slower than the Italian would have liked. Five days of MotoGP testing at both Sepang and Mandalika Circuits, however, have proved fruitful as Qatar’s opening race of 2022 fast approaches.

“I need to improve still the feeling with the bike,” Morbidelli explained as three days on Lombok Island concluded on Sunday. “I just jumped on the bike in a good condition in Sepang so we started our work with Patrick [Primmer, his new crew chief] in Sepang. We started to build up a base and finally we managed to get a good base here.

“We managed to get better and better during the three days here and we managed also to squeeze the performance and see something interesting. I still need some more feeling with the bike, some knowledge of the bike, it behaves differently compared to the ’19. I still feel that I'm linked more to the 19 than the '22 bike so I need to blend a bit better with the ’22.”

As the paddock travelled between Malaysia and Indonesia for preseason testing, social media was awash with images and videos of riders training and running the circuits - especially the new 4.3kms layout. Morbidelli, however, has been cautious with his regime due to his continuing rehabilitation.

“Actually I needed to hold back a little bit with the training for the knee,” he confirmed. “Especially when I'm far from home. For example, between Sepang and here, I was seeing everybody that were going running, everybody was making two laps running or whatever. Fabio was running once in the morning, once in the afternoon, once in the night. All day long running. I could just walk and I was just walking.

"I will have to improve on that when I get home. That's good because that didn't upset my knee and I was able to bend it very well during testing. So I felt very good but for physical conditioning, it's not the best. We will try to put everything together when we go home now. Try to start running finally because I think I definitely need it. Or start you know really grinding, I definitely need some cardio so we will try to build it up for good in Qatar.

“I'm feeling great with Patrick,” he continued, on working with his new chief mechanic over the past fortnight. “We've done great work together. He's an animal, technically, he really knows what to do on the bike. It will be his first race as a crew chief in Qatar. It will be a special moment for him for sure. I wish him the best. I wish him good nerves because you need them.”

With the prep work done and his one lap pace improving dramatically over the final day’s running - leaving him fifth in the combined times at the close of play Sunday and three-tenths off his championship-winning teammate Fabio Quartararo - how does the 27-year-old rate his race potential in his current condition?

“Difficult,” he admitted. “I was feeling good with used tyres, I was pretty fast with used tyres or decent with used tyres but I don't know about making laps in a row. Let's see. As I said we will have to pump up the cardio from here to Qatar and let's see.”