Yamaha toughens its stance on Fabio Quartararo

The rider market that will shape the 2027 MotoGP grid is expected to start moving as the 2025 campaign draws to a close, erupt early next season and be largely settled by the time MotoGP returns to Europe, around May.

Some riders will attempt to stay where they are, either because they are satisfied with their current machinery or simply because that’s where their future is the most secure. Others will aim at higher-placed outfits.

All signals sent by Quartararo over the last 18 months point to a change of scenery. His frustration is understandable, considering his latest win dates back to the 2022 German Grand Prix. However, leaving Yamaha would mean parting ways with the manufacturer that gave him his MotoGP debut in 2019 after eight seasons on the M1 – the bike that he rode to the world title in 2021.

Instinctively, one might assume Quartararo could sign with whichever team he wants. But a closer look at the situation and his options are significantly narrowed down, especially if he wants guarantees on his next bike’s competitiveness.

“I want to be able to finish in the top three in every test,” he said. This doesn’t seem to be within reach for the prototype Yamaha has been developing – which includes the much-discussed V4 engine project led by Augusto Fernandez and Andrea Dovisioso.

Quartararo would love to stay at Yamaha, but only with a bike allowing him to fight for wins. He feels at home within a team that he has built around him, which takes care of him and strives to understand him – even when he tests his colleagues’ patience.

“What Yamaha hasn’t managed in years, I hope they can achieve in a few months. Because I don’t have any more time, that’s clear,” Quartararo told Motorsport in Australia. “More than starting to move, I’m thinking internally about what I really want, what I’d be willing to do.

“The market starts moving earlier every year; I can’t afford to fall asleep,” he warned as he has done for months or even years, expecting a reaction.

Quartararo’s strategy goes beyond what he tells journalists after every track session. There are subtler signs: gestures even more defiant than his words, details that some might deem trivial – like walking through the paddock without team attire. For a company paying him around €10m a year, that’s disrespectful.

Yamaha insiders claim that the once cheerful and approachable kid has given way to a greyer, more distant version of himself – a change that hasn’t gone unnoticed there. A year ago, it might not have mattered, but things have changed since Paolo Pavesio replaced Lin Jarvis as Yamaha’s managing director.