By Dean Adams
It’s only the second race of the season and a Petronas Yamaha rider is already down an engine.
Franco Morbidelli’s Yamaha M1 engine expired in a very publicly ugly way in practice at Qatar. The way that the engine failed was obviously very serious as the bike spewed a cloud of “death smoke” as Morbidelli slowed down.
Yamaha was plagued by bad valves in 2020 MotoGP championship; and were later widely accused of cheating by other manufacturers.
MotoGP manufacturers are allowed seven engines per season per rider. Morbidelli is already using engine number three.
