Yamaha toughens its stance on MotoGP champion Quartararo

The rider market that will shape the 2027 MotoGP grid is expected to start moving as the 2025 campaign draws to a close and be largely settled by the time the championship 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.

And then there’s Fabio Quartararo, facing the most consequential decision of his entire career so far. The Frenchman must decide which leathers he’ll don when he turns 28 – typically the age when riders peak.

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.

Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing

Photo by: Asif Zubairi / Motorsport Network

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 Autosport 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.

Pavesio comes from Yamaha’s marketing division and was more closely linked to the WorldSBK project than to MotoGP. His approach is more pragmatic than Jarvis’, whose opinion was decisive when Yamaha picked Quartararo as Valentino Rossi’s successor. Pavesio wasn’t part of that chapter, though he is fully aware of the Frenchman’s talent and potential.

Paolo Pavesio, Yamaha Racing Managing Director, Lin Jarvis

Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images

Pavesio’s intention is to extend Quartararo’s contract until the end of 2028 at the earliest. However, Autosport understands the new management now prioritises the medium- and long-term project over any individual figure — even one as significant as Quartararo, the only Yamaha rider to have scored a podium (at Jerez) and taken pole position (five times) this season.

“I don’t talk much with Paolo. For me, the people that matter are the ones in the garage,” the rider bluntly told Autosport in Australia.

Yamaha has been growing its investment in MotoGP, so the company executives believe their highest-profile ambassador’s barbs are hurting those working tirelessly to help him win again.

In under two weeks, Quartararo will make a decisive test for the next chapter of his career, but the V4-powered M1 has hardly been encouraging. Yet, this doesn’t seem to worry those who are overseeing its development.

“I don’t see the bosses looking nervous, to be honest. No one seems worried. This bike will grow – even for the February shakedown, we already have improvements planned,” Fernandez told Autosport.

With such a significant decision to make and Yamaha’s new approach under Pavesio, the only really nervous person might be Quartararo himself.