Toprak Razgatlioglu's Himalayan Ascent: The Real Test Has Only Just Begun

In the first GP he’s already in line with the other Yamahas: “El Turco’s” debut is tough, but let’s keep an eye on him...

Toprak Razgatlioglu is inevitably facing the toughest challenge of his life, and it’s not a given that he’ll “win” it... Yamaha is going through its worst moment in MotoGP and the V4 gamble takes a lot of time, a change that doesn’t help motivation and morale inside the garage. Perhaps especially for Quartararo, Rins and Miller, but we can say it’s a bit different for the newcomer, who for now must focus all his attention on the learning process. And to be honest, in the first round at Buriram he even managed to surprise! It’s only the beginning, there’s a ton to learn, and the Jerez test with Pirelli, MotoGP’s new supplier from the revolutionary 2027, surely wasn’t useless either. But let’s talk about the present.

We had already outlined his Sprint pace, the best of the Yamaha quartet despite a slide (we talked about it here), but in Sunday’s long race the multi-time WorldSBK champion from Turkey also did well. He’s not that far from the pace shown by his brand mates, as the post-GP analysis shows. Let’s start with the Pramac Yamaha rookie, 17th at the finish: on record three laps in the high 1:31s, with a 1:31.882 as his best time; afterwards he stays essentially steady between 1:32.0 and 1:32.5, then in the second half of the race he starts to rise, reaching 1:33 pace and even touching low 1:34s at the end. Quartararo went from a 1:31.605 right at the start, from lap 9 holding a mid-1:32 pace for most of the race, getting to three references over 1:33, with a 1:33.5 as the “worst” time. Rins’ race followed more or less the same pattern, starting with a 1:31.626 and from lap 10 stabilizing above 1:32, finishing in the 1:33s over the last two laps. Finally Miller, the last of the Yamaha quartet in the first GP of the year, oscillated between 1:31.6 and 1:32.6 in the first part of the race, then from lap 16 rose to 1:33, 1:34, ending the race with a 1:37.996 and 18th place at the finish.

Moving from production-derived bikes to prototypes isn’t just any debut, it’s an Everest to climb. Quartararo, Rins and Miller have great MotoGP experience, and clearly Razgatlioglu at the moment isn’t able to follow a precise direction of his own but must latch onto the data of the aforementioned trio, studying them both in the garage and on track, as he showed in all the tests and during the opening weekend of the 2026 World Championship. He needs to find the right feeling with the M1 (alas, not the best bike in the field at the moment), he needs confidence in the tires, and he also needs to rebuild himself, something he had clearly long achieved in Superbike but which in MotoGP must be redone entirely from scratch. His manager and mentor Kenan Sofuoglu has indicated the only possible goal in this debut year in the World Championship (and the last with the 1000s): to be the best Yamaha rider. It seems a very difficult target, right? But history teaches us that surprises are never lacking, that the line between disaster and success is very, very thin.