Never one to overplay his hand, Petronas Yamaha’s Franco Morbidelli is modest in his targets for this weekend’s MotoGP season opener in Qatar.

The Italian, who was runner-up in last year’s championship, is fooling no-one with his talk of ‘possible podiums’ as his pace over the second test was only overshadowed by the factory Yamaha team.

“I think we are ready for the first race of the season. We worked hard in testing, tried several things and then focused on setting up the bike for the Qatar track,” said Morbidelli.

“The set-up is never perfect, you can always find things to change and improve, but I think we have a really good base.

“To have a good race there you need to be fast, have a good pace, to be consistent and understand which is the right tyre.

“It’s hard to know from testing what the target should be, but we want to aim to be in the top-five and to fight for the podium – we think it’s possible. We’ll see where we are though on Sunday.”