Valencia crucial for Yamaha and the V4 project amid doubts and high expectations

As already announced, today came the official confirmation of Augusto Fernandez’s presence at the Valencia GP. It’s a crucial event for Yamaha’s parallel project, the much-discussed V4, which has already hit the track in other wild card outings this year. The appointment at Ricardo Tormo, however, will be decisive for this project: the Spanish tester has already asked Yamaha for help, acknowledging both that more is needed and that it’s still a project that’s hard to judge because it’s still raw. But this GP will be pivotal in deciding which direction to take and whether a complete switch can realistically happen as early as 2026, as requested by Quartararo and also suggested by Fernandez.

“I’m happy to be competing again and especially to race once more in Valencia” is Augusto Fernandez’s comment ahead of the final round of the 2025 MotoGP season. He then touches on the key topic: “We need to keep working to improve the V4 prototype, gathering further data.” The Spanish test rider himself underlines the importance of this Grand Prix: “It will be an important weekend to decide the direction in which to work during the winter and next year.” How will the new power unit fare at Circuit Ricardo Tormo? Remember that Augusto Fernandez did not deliver a particularly encouraging assessment at the end of the last wild card outing in Sepang.

Yamaha is working extremely hard; in fact, the tester himself admitted before the Malaysian GP a sort of “preference” from the factory for developing the V4, essentially a request to focus more effort on the epochal shift the Iwata brand is undertaking, historically loyal to the inline-four. But Yamaha has been struggling for some time, hence the choice to start working on a completely different philosophy, aligning with what all the other manufacturers are doing. The change is radical and time is needed to reach the right level of competitiveness, but unfortunately time is short… Eyes on Valencia and the benchmarks of the M1 V4.