Quartararo and Yamaha, what a miserable way to end it: the ordeal continues at Aragon

Even at MotorLand the M1 isn’t competitive, and the Frenchman was also left stranded in the sprint race due to a technical failure: he certainly can’t wait to close this chapter.

Fabio Quartararo can’t stand Yamaha anymore—this is the reality. The MotoGP Grand Prix in Aragon is also turning into a complete flop for the Iwata manufacturer, which hasn’t managed to shine with any of its four riders. The Frenchman is particularly frustrated; he’s the one suffering the most from the situation and is eager for a change of scenery.

After becoming world champion in 2021 and runner-up in 2022, he didn’t expect such a heavy decline from Yamaha. It’s true that there’s a new technical project for 2026 and that he knew with the new V4 engine he wouldn’t be able to aim for great results, but it’s hard to accept not seeing improvements and heading into every weekend without specific goals.

At MotorLand the M1 once again proved not up to par. Quartararo went no better than seventeenth in disastrous qualifying, where Jack Miller, fifteenth, was the best Yamaha rider. His sprint race ended on lap five, when white smoke came from his bike, forcing him to slow down and retire.

The engine technical problem didn’t completely catch the 27-year-old Frenchman off guard: “Right from the start — reports Crash.net — I almost had to stop because of the engine. And then I lost power little by little. It had already happened to me in Thailand. I knew something was wrong, until the lap when we all saw what happened. So, there’s really nothing to say.”

Yamaha brought updates to Aragon, but they aren’t delivering particularly positive feedback so far: “All weekend long,” Quartararo explains, “this bike has been really slow. We had to try a lot of things, so I went from one bike to the other. It was more about testing than looking for performance. The new frame? It’s worse than the standard one. I’m playing more of a test rider’s role; I tried the frame three times and it didn’t work.”

FQ20 is trying to do his best with the technical package at his disposal and to give useful feedback to the engineers to try to improve, but he continues to see no progress, and that doesn’t help him keep his morale and motivation high. It’s a real shame that his adventure with Yamaha is ending with such a negative season, after they won the MotoGP title together in 2021: the Iwata manufacturer hadn’t triumphed since 2015, with Jorge Lorenzo champion ahead of Valentino Rossi.

Now Quartararo can’t wait for this championship to end and to jump on the Honda in the Valencia test. In 2027 there will be new technical regulations in MotoGP, and his hope is that he made the right choice in betting on the HRC project. He’s tired of struggling and piling up disappointments; he wants to get back to fighting for podiums and wins.