Quartararo desperate at the Buriram test: Yamaha struggles, the V4 won't get off the ground

Quartararo dejected, Yamaha is a long way off: the situation at the end of the first day of testing at Buriram.

It was a tough day for Fabio Quartararo (just back from an injury suffered at Sepang) and the images from Buriram made that clear: above all, the middle finger to the M1 on track and the eloquent gesture of despair in the garage, as we show you in the cover image. At Yamaha the atmosphere is anything but calm after the first day of MotoGP testing on the Thai track; in fact, the prospect of an imminent split between the two parties seems increasingly likely. The path to making the V4 competitive looks decidedly uphill, and unfortunately this was predictable, given it’s a revolutionary project launched only last year. A big risk for Yamaha, which nonetheless chose to immediately try this new path. Perhaps prematurely? For now there seems to be more frustration than anything else within the team. Even at the launch, Paolo Pavesio admitted that the first part of the season wouldn’t be easy—but we’ll see how long this “difficult start” lasts and how much it affects the team’s mood. Alongside that, it may not take long to find out what Quartararo will do in 2027, although the answer, barring sensational twists, seems fairly obvious...

Scanning today’s timesheets, all the Yamahas are a long way back: we have to look almost at the tail end, with a minimum gap of about one second to the leading Ducatis. "A long and very difficult day, but we’ll try to do better tomorrow; we hope to manage at least two runs with the same bike" Quartararo began on the official MotoGP channel’s microphones at the end of this first day at the Chang International Circuit. "We need to understand what the bike’s base is, how it works... Both in Sepang and here we’re struggling with the new engine. As for me, we’ve changed a lot of things, we never stopped. Right now I’m really struggling to find myself." There’s also a comparison with last year’s M1: "It was really strong over a single lap, whereas now we’re still very slow." There’s one final test day left to try to make some progress, which certainly won’t radically change the situation as if by magic. Yamaha’s V4 path is very long and arduous.