Fleetwood trails Open champion Molinari by more than a million points and needs to win the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai to have a chance of being crowned European number one again.
Even that would not be good enough if the other half of the "Moliwood" pair finishes inside the top five at Jumeirah Golf Estates and Fleetwood is under no illusions about the size of his task.
"It's nice to have a chance, as little as it is, but it's a massively tall order," Fleetwood said. "It's great that we are playing the first round together and hopefully I will have a chance on Sunday, but if not then Francesco will deserve it after the year he's had."
Fleetwood was in Molinari's position last year and almost lost out to Justin Rose, who led by a shot with seven holes to play in pursuit of a third straight win which would have given him the title.
"Last year I didn't really do a great job of leading and handling it and I think there was a massive focus on Race to Dubai," Fleetwood added. "This year I can just concentrate on the tournament and what we need to do to win that.
"There's a bigger element of freedom because that's just the way it is. Unless I had a three-shot lead going into the back nine on Sunday, I can't really lose anything. I either win or I don't, and that's pretty black and white this week."
Rory McIlroy's slim chance to win the Race to Dubai for the fourth time disappeared when he was unable to win last week's Nedbank Golf Challenge, but the Northern Irishman hopes a new driver can help maintain his incredible record at Jumeirah Golf Estates.
"I did some work with Adrian from TaylorMade on Saturday night in Sun City," said McIlroy, whose form figures in this event read 3-5-11-1-5-2-1-9.
"He walked the first three rounds with me and he saw that I have no problem hitting the fairway with a 3-wood or a 5-wood. Something was wrong with the driver.
"So he took the driver, tried to match it up a little closer to the 3-wood and change the swing weight, changed the shaft, changed the settings a little bit in the weighting and the head, and it's been much better.
"I drove it much better in Sun City and I drove it much better today in the pro-am. That's a big positive coming into this week.
"Unfortunately it's a driver that's only going to last a week because I have to get a new one next year again, but at least it gives me a better chance to win this week, I guess."
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