Yamaha without Quartararo at Sepang: crash, broken finger, and testing halted

Fabio Quartararo already out of the Sepang test: the Yamaha rider explained the situation after the crash.

Seeing Fabio Quartararo back on track after the high-speed crash in the morning seemed like a good sign. Unfortunately, there’s more: in addition to abrasions, the Yamaha rider has suffered an injury to a finger on his left hand. Team and rider have therefore decided to stop and skip the remaining two days of testing at Sepang, with Augusto Fernandez being “moved” into the Monster Energy Yamaha box as his replacement. The goal now is to recover in time for the next official test in Thailand, ahead of the start of the 2026 MotoGP season.

“He was sore all over” admitted Massimo Meregalli in the final minutes of the session, ruling out fractures. Later, however, the 2021 MotoGP champion himself updated the situation. “The arm hurts, but the finger is broken,” Quartararo told motogp.com. Hence the decision to stop immediately, to allow him to recover and avoid complications. Yamaha, working overtime on the brand-new V4 project, simply cannot afford to lose its best rider right now!

“There’s no point in continuing now. I’m sad because I wanted to keep going, but it’ll be better for the first race.” What happened in the crash? Quartararo admits he doesn’t know exactly what happened... “But it was a high-speed fall and I ended up quite far out in the gravel. It could have been much worse, I was lucky.” The work with Yamaha is halted, and there’s a lot to do. “There’s a lot of work ahead, we’re still very far off,” he admitted.