The mountain Yamaha has to climb with its V4-powered MotoGP contender

Yamaha is facing a long road to recovery after the Thailand Grand Prix exposed its true deficit to the front in MotoGP.

While pre-season testing had already indicated that the Japanese manufacturer faced a tough start to 2026, the results from the Buriram weekend painted a grim picture.

In qualifying, none of the four bikes progressed to Q2, with Fabio Quartararo ending up 16th on the grid in the best of the Yamahas. The situation wasn’t much better in the sprint, with Jack Miller ending up more than 13 seconds behind winner Pedro Acosta in 15th place.

In the grand prix itself, the four Yamahas were among the six lowest finishers, only joined by a struggling Maverick Vinales and Fermin Aldeguer’s stand-in Michele Pirro. Factory team riders Quartararo and Alex Rins did make it to the points in 14th and 15th respectively, but their results were aided by late-race retirements. If Marc Marquez and Joan Mir hadn’t suffered tyre-related issues, and Alex Marquez hadn’t crashed in the closing stages, the best Yamaha would have only been 17th.

Yamaha’s Thailand GP weekend

Yamaha has essentially pursued a clean-sheet design to accommodate its new V4 engine, which replaces its traditional inline four-cylinder motor. Building a new engine in MotoGP is no easy task, and the new M1 simply lacks power compared to its rivals.

A look at the speed-trap figures shows a clear hierarchy among the five MotoGP manufacturers. While Aprilia and Ducati are neck and neck at the front, Honda and KTM continue to lose time to their Italian rivals on the straights.

In the case of Yamaha, the deficit is even starker, with Quartararo 6.5km/h slower on the straights than the pacesetting Aprilias and Ducatis. In fact, Quartararo was the only Yamaha to cross 338km/h, with the other three M1s going much slower and only touching 336km/h in the race. That translates into a deficit of nearly 9km/h.

Yamaha understood the gravity of the situation and didn’t allow any of its four riders to appear for their usual post-race interviews. This potentially avoided any negative comments Quartararo or others could have made about Yamaha’s worst start to a MotoGP season.

In place of riders, Yamaha’s MotoGP chief Paolo Pavesio appeared in front of the media to offer his assessment of the situation. Pavesio appeared to be under no illusion of the challenge the Japanese manufacturer faces to turn the M1 into a competitive package.

“We are on a journey which we decided to start last year,” he said. “It is a completely new project and now we see very clearly from the first racing weekend what the gap is, and we understand that we have quite a mountain to climb.

Paolo Pavesio, Yamaha Motor Racing Managing Director

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz

“But we are committed as we were before when we took the decision to make the steps, one after the other.

“Our riders gave 110%, the company is giving 110%, and we will keep doing so. This is the only way. There will be no magic, one step after the other, one second after the other. We are determined to grow the project up to the moment that we will be competitive again.”

Following last month’s Buriram test, Quartararo said it could take Yamaha anywhere between half a year to a full season to reach a decent level of performance in MotoGP.

Pavesio was non-committal about a timeline, but admitted that the bike’s deficit on Sunday was a bit too large.

“It’s very difficult to give a number – or a number of months,” he said. “It’s clear that we are discovering things every time we go on the track. We are discovering things which we have to improve.

“We are still understanding the best setting even in the machine. In this case, thanks to concession, we can do much more than other [manufacturers]. This is why in this season we are going to see, learn, understand, change, and improve. And I expect a season with a growing trajectory.

“There is our performance [level] that we could deliver last year. From some perspective, we knew that we would have lost something in the beginning on the flying lap where we could achieve a very good level last year.

“This is something we were understanding to sacrifice to give more consistency during the race. I would say yesterday was not too bad. The gap from first Yamaha to the winner was exactly the same gap of last year as the starting project, but clearly in the long race we have suffered a bit more.”

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