Challenges of the Losail International Circuit initially looked to be repeating themselves as Franky Morbidelli returned for his second visit in as many weeks.

Despite the Petronas team changing a multitude of parts on his Yamaha M1 after the Italian’s disastrous opening race, Morbidelli experienced an eventful FP1 session, with multiple technical issues impeding his track time.

Removed from the first free practice on two separate occasions thanks to smoke pouring from rear of his SRT machine and the marshals’s flag waving, the rollercoaster session still allowed the laidback rider to repeatedly top the times before eventually concluding the blisteringly hot afternoon in fifth.

“It was a good day for us,” the Italian confirmed confidently before changing tack slightly and admitting “it didn’t start very well. We had the problem on two engines, but luckily the problem was not so big so we will be able to use again those engines. We decided to change one because we couldn’t afford to risk anything in FP2, because it is a really important practice, here in Qatar especially. So we did that, and the night went quite smoothly.”

Confirming there were no warning lights on the dash, Morbidelli continued “I’m confident that it is not a major problem, because my technician told me so. It didn’t feel like a flashback of last year, because last year the engines just shut down while this year I stopped because I saw flags around the track - I couldn’t really see any problem and I didn’t really hear or feel any problems.

A cooler night practice saw Morbidelli the first rider out on the Doha track for FP2 and immediately posting the third fastest time as the hot-laps came flying in. Feeling more comfortable under the Losail floodlights than the prior weekend, the Petronas rider’s 1’53.699 lap briefly placed him second before completing the session seventh in the overall standings.

“I was able to have a better balance between the feeling in the morning, and the night” the Petronas rider explained. “I was able to have a more normal feeling at night, so that was positive.

“I made two time attacks, and the first one went pretty okay and then the second one I got two yellow flags, so I couldn’t really see my potential on the second time attack but anyway it was enough to get into the top-10 with the first one, so that’s positive.

“There are still things to improve and the feeling is not perfect, especially in the night, but we are on the right path. We have changed a lot of things on the bike today to improve upon what we had in the race last Sunday, and it felt a lot better. I feel like we’re in the game and that we can now work to increase the potential even more.

“FP1 is the best session that a problem can happen” Morbidelli explained further, “so you have time to react. We have time to solve it. I would like to thank every single guy in the crew that started working their ass off in order to change the engine as quickly as possible and also we needed to make other changes on bike two, so huge thanks to my crew today they really did an extra, extra job, and they did it spot on.

“I feel this weekend is going to be more difficult compared to last weekend to fight with the two Ducatis for a single lap but I also feel that my potential and my feeling is better than last weekend. These two things give me a mixed idea about the qualifying - to get on top and qualifying on top is always important, and it’s always the aim. That’s what we will try to do and it’s going to be important as well for how the race is going to go, that’s for sure. We’ve seen that the Ducatis in the race are a little bit less dangerous. They still are, but a little bit less than qualifying, so hopefully it’s going to be like this also, this weekend but we cannot rely on hope. We will give the maximum and we will try to qualify at least on the first two rows or maximum three rows, and from then on, try to make a good race.”