Marco Bezzecchi
Yamaha have already sustained PR damage before the 2026 MotoGP season has even begun.
Prior to the test, it was reported that Fabio Quartararo has agreed to join Honda. Then, on day one, Quartararo crashed and broke his finger.
It’s not a serious injury for the 2021 world champion, but he won’t be present for MotoGP’s Kuala Lumpur season launch. Yamaha are ‘angry’ with Quartararo for flying home.
Should Yamaha go back to their inline four engine until the V4 is ready?
The situation worsened further when Yamaha discovered an engine issue but couldn’t find the root cause. That forced them to sit out Wednesday’s running, and run with reduced power on Thursday.
The excitement sparked by the arrival of Toprak Razgatlioglu at satellite team Pramac was overshadowed by a series of damaging setbacks.
Toprak Razgatlioglu is bound to be unhappy with Yamaha’s Sepang test
Razgatlioglu completed 98 laps during the test, which ranks him second from bottom among the full-time 2026 riders. Only the injured Quartararo logged fewer.
That in itself shouldn’t be too great a concern for the World Superbikes champion given that he also took part in the Shakedown a week earlier, a perk of Yamaha’s rank-D concessions.
Honda lead the way in total lap count! Which rider from this list has benefited the most from MotoGP’s Sepang test?
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But Yamaha’s engine is even slower than expected. Perhaps the riders could accept a V4 that was either down on power or unreliable at this early stage of the project, but it’s difficult to swallow both.
Dennis Noyes, a former motorcycle racer and now a journalist, wrote on X that Razgatlioglu will be ‘calling’ his notoriously impatient manager, Kenan Sofuoglu, to ask ‘what kind of mess have you put me in?’
The bizarre change Yamaha had to make to Toprak Razgatlioglu’s bike
Razgatlioglu has been honest about his shortcomings this week, and his main priority for the moment is clearly adapting to MotoGP.
Still, the 29-year-old, who has signed a factory contract, surely won’t be impressed with the Yamaha operation up to this point. There’s still plenty of time to turn things around, of course.
Razgatlioglu is bracing himself for a slow start, but he will still need to mentally adjust to fighting for points (likely to be Yamaha’s early objective) rather than poles and race wins.
As if to make his life even harder, six-footer Razgatlioglu can’t use Yamaha’s seat aero due to MotoGP’s bike height restrictions. It remains to be seen whether the engineers can find a workaround.
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