If you want to understand why MotoGP chooses to go testing at the Sepang International Circuit, Friday was a good example. It rained during both practice sessions for MotoGP, both in the morning and the afternoon. But despite that, the MotoGP riders didn’t lose too much time to the weather.
That is because it dries out really quickly, even if there is an absolute downpour. The rain fell heavily enough at the end of the morning session to send the riders out with wet tires. But when the rain fell in the afternoon, the track dried out so quickly they missed barely 10 minutes of track time. A rainy day in Sepang means little disruption to proceedings. At Jerez or Misano, you are waiting for half a day in the hope the track might dry out.
The rain was just one element (pun intended) of the rather weird weather in Sepang. It is still hot, of course (this is the tropics after all), but it was possible to wander around outside without quickly succumbing to the heat.
That is also noticeable when it comes to track temperatures. During practice at last year’s Malaysian Grand Prix, track temperature was 52°C. On Friday afternoon, it was 37°C. And this is where the rule that Michelin has to declare which tire compounds they will bring to each GP before the start of the seasons is biting the teams who demanded it.
Despite the fact that the French tire maker has brought a softer medium rear, the riders are struggling with tire wear and tire choice. (Technically, the medium rear is slightly harder, but doesn’t have the reinforced casing used last year, making it more responsive but still capable of withstanding the stresses of Sepang.)
Miguel Oliveira was frustrated at the lack of a working medium rear. “It’s unbelievable, but we cannot use the medium,” the Prima Pramac Yamaha rider said, before correcting himself. “I mean, we can use it, but it’s just first there is absolutely no grip, it’s an absolute disaster. I think it’s also strange for Michelin, I think also themselves are not really understanding why this is not happening. But throughout the years, especially recent years, there’s not a medium tire here that works. So we all try to just take the soft until the end or the softest option available. And I’m 90% sure today that’s going to be the case for Sunday.”
Luca Marini felt that Michelin had brought the best choices from their range of available compounds for the Malaysian GP. “This year the allocation is fantastic. They did it very well, we cannot complain this year,” the Honda HRC Castrol rider said. “Last year, they did a mistake, but this year it’s fantastic.”
The problem, Marini pointed out, was track conditions. “I don’t think it’s Michelin’s fault, it’s just that for these conditions, for this track, they are not working perfectly, especially the medium, but even the soft. Because with the soft, for sure tomorrow we will have blistering in the sprint race, but we cannot use the medium because it’s too slow compared to the soft. But it’s not their fault.” Maybe a new tire might help, Marini suggested, but Michelin are not going to produce a new tire for their final season in MotoGP, as they ramp up their preparations to take over in the WorldSBK paddock.
The timing of the rain, starting just as most riders were out to start their first time attacks, and lasting just long enough to leave them with just one more shot at getting through to Q2, helped to shuffle the pack significantly. It was vital to get out on time, and to manage the risk you were willing to take.
Pecco Bagnaia was one of the riders who got it wrong. “It’s more my fault that I’m not in Q2, because I started from the garage too late, and I just had two laps, and in these conditions, doing more laps is better,” the Ducati Lenovo rider said. That mistake was costly, leaving him stuck down in twelfth and out of Q2.
At least he was feeling better than in Mandalika and Phillip Island. He didn’t have the feedback and confidence he had had in his triumphant weekend in Motegi, but at least there was something there. “The feeling is still not there in terms of performance, I cannot brake and enter in the way I want, and we are working for it, again. But it truly is a better start compared to the last two weekends.” He felt like he had in the race at Phillip Island, where he had the pace of the top five before crashing out.
Bagnaia wasn’t the only rider to miss out, and is joined in Q1 by the star of the last two weekends, Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi. Bezzecchi was fifteenth, but he is not as far away as he looked. But overall, he was not happy.
“It’s been not the best Friday, still some issues to solve,” the factory Aprilia rider said on Friday evening. “This morning was not too bad. Then this afternoon – besides the conditions that were a bit tricky, but for everyone – we also improved compared to the morning, but we made a smaller step compared to the other guys. We will have to work tonight to try to use the Q1 as an advantage for us.”
Fermin Aldeguer is also stuck in Q1, though the Gresini Ducati rider laid the blame entirely at his own door. “I was a little bit nervous in the last part, because in the first time attack, I didn’t make a good lap time,” he said. Apart from that, Aldeguer was feeling very good. “The important thing is that the feeling was good. We were fast during all day, in all conditions, and we have to continue to work and improve from these mistakes.”
With some of the big hitters out of Q2, the top ten had some surprising names. No Aprilias, only three Ducatis, but three Yamahas, two Hondas, and two KTMs. After starting the session off with a crash, Pedro Acosta was fastest overall, the Red Bull KTM Factory Racing rider declaring himself happy with proceedings.
“Not the best way to start a session, for sure. Quite sorry to everyone, because it’s not the way to be fast,” Acosta acknowledged. “But anyway, quite happy with the pace that I showed after my crash, quite happy with both time attacks and quite happy now with how I’m talking inside the garage, because now knowing that we don’t have many tools – let’s say, we will not have any upgrades from here to Valencia, and we know how tough the tire consumption is for us, I’m trying to be more focused on the small details that can maybe make a difference for us. Because when we are that much on the limit with the tires, everything can help or everything can make it worse.”
Acosta may be fastest, and lead a surprising cast of characters at the front – Johann Zarco is second, Jack Miller third, Joan Mir fourth and Fabio Quartararo fifth, with Fabio Di Giannantonio the first Ducati – but that doesn’t necessarily mean he is the favorite for the weekend. The rain shower in timed practice shook up the grid, but it also made it hard to figure out who actually has a solid race pace.
That is always difficult at Sepang, as it is at other very long tracks. A 7-lap run can take the best part of 20 minutes, including in and out lap. So the data we have at our disposal to assess pace is sparse, to say the very least. It looks like Fermin Aldeguer, Marco Bezzecchi, Joan Mir, Luca Marini, and Alex Márquez have strong race pace. But I am basing that on just a handful of laps.
The other complicating factor is the state of the track. Cool track temperatures allied to a green track on Friday morning, which then had a downpour to wash away any rubber freshly laid during the first part of FP1. That, and the fact that the track was last resurfaced nine years ago and gets a lot of use is starting to take its toll.
“Super slippery,” is how Fabio Quartararo described the surface. “It’s a track where our bike is also affected by if there is rubber on track or not, but this one is already super low grip and starts to be bumpy. Turn 1 you can see the track is starting to be rippled. I think that we have to do something because it’s a track where we really test and we make the race at the end of the year. So I think that soon they will have to make something.”
High temperatures and an abrasive surface make it hard on tires, with grip dropping off very quickly. “With five, six laps on the tire, everyone has a good pace,” Joan Mir said. “It’s true that today the soft tire drops a lot because the track is very slippery and you spin a lot. So you make two laps in a good lap time and then boom, massive drop to everyone.”
Marco Bezzecchi had the same experience. “The drop was quite big, to be honest today, but also the condition of the track is pretty strange compared to other times that we came here,” the factory Aprilia rider said. “For me personally, I had quite a big drop. So yeah, for sure, we will have to manage a lot the tires during the race.”
Managing the tire is going to be the key on Saturday in the sprint, given how much the soft rear drops after five or six laps. For Sunday, everyone will use the medium rear, as they did last year. “The medium for sure is the correct choice in the long race,” Luca Marini said. “It will be just a slow pace, but every time in the Sunday race the pace is very slow.”
Speaking of slow, Yamaha have once again fielded their V4 M1 prototype, with test rider Augusto Fernandez at the helm. There are worrying signs the project is seriously behind schedule, not least because there has been no testing with the bike since Misano. The V4 has a new frame, with adjustable insets to allow the stiffness to be tweaked, which is small progress. But Yamaha still won’t let Fernandez run with full power. And he was the slowest bike through the speed traps by a non-trivial amount.
That is understandable, from a Japanese perspective. As a rule, the Japanese approach is more gradual, building slowly and trying to make progress by making things work. The more aggressive European approach is to push the limits, and see what goes pop. No manufacturer likes to see their engines explode – especially if there are very few of them this early in the prototype stage. But the lack of power is also hampering chassis development.
Augusto Fernandez believes the engineers are being too conservative. “The way they are taking care of the engine, it’s not the moment, they say. For me, I think we should have more power, honestly. Because then when you put full power, even though now the engine feels smooth, we need to see once you put the full power.”
The engine is one thing, the bigger concern is that by changing the engine layout, they are having to completely reconfigure their understanding of how a bike works. A V4 is not just narrower than an inline four, the way its mass is distributed, and how it rotates around its center of mass is completely different.
Put simply, when you brake hard on an inline four, the cylinder bank is forced forward and its mass is pushed closer to the ground. On a V4, the front two cylinders are forced down toward the ground, where the rear cylinder bank is pushed forward and up. That changes how the bike reacts under braking, under acceleration, and on turn in. And that is just a single aspect.
Yamaha are still figuring out the most basic vehicle dynamics of their V4, and that means they are nowhere near having a base setup. That is evident from how Fernandez describes how the bike feels so different at each track. “I feel completely different to Misano, that was more like the feeling we had in Barcelona and Brno,” he said.
“We found out that there was again a completely different feeling, asking for completely different geometry than Misano, so it’s like start from zero again,” the Spaniard said. “Also because changing the geometry, the electronics are working differently. So starting again. We are trying to find the base of the bike in numbers. We don’t have it yet.”
The difference in grip levels and layout between Misano and Sepang left the Yamaha test team searching around for settings. “Different layout, completely different. So the bike is working different. I don’t know why it’s so reactive to these kind of changes, because normally, yeah, you change a bit of setup, but once you have the base, you move more or less in millimeters, but now we are making like centimeters changes. So it’s quite big. Also for me to find the pace, with two centimeters shorter or longer, it’s a completely different bike. So just patience and keep working.”
This is in part purely a lack of data about the new bike. When you have a good understanding of how a bike works, you can take a good guess at how a change in geometry will affect it. That means you can work in the smallest increments, a millimeter at a time: a couple of millimeters of preload, a few millimeters of wheelbase, moving the headstock fore or aft by a fraction.
But Yamaha don’t have a base setting, and they don’t have a full understanding of how and why the V4 behaves the way it does. Because they have 22 years of data on the inline four, but only a few months of data from the V4. And so they are changing by centimeters at a time: moving the axle back or forward, the pivot up and down (mostly down, chasing grip) changing ride height, preload, forks, offset.
The biggest problem? “We need to keep working. And understand that we don’t have too much time, also,” Fernandez pointed out. This is the basis of the bike that the Yamaha riders will be testing at Valencia in just under four weeks time. And the data gathered on that will be used to build the bike that Yamaha brings to the Sepang test in February next year. And that bike has to be ready to race, and ready to be competitive.
Because it is becoming increasingly clear that if it isn’t, Fabio Quartararo is gone when his contract expires at the end of 2026. He is making his intentions ever clearer in his statements to the press, remaining polite but direct, but leaving no room for doubt about his expectations.
Had he talked to Augusto Fernandez about the Yamaha V4? “I don’t think there is a point yet where I have to ask how he’s going, because I can see from the results and from his face how he’s going,” Quartararo said. “And like I said, I think, and I hope that for Valencia, we can have something to have a bit better performance.”
What exactly would constitute ‘a bit better performance’, in Quartararo’s eyes? “I need a fast bike. I need to feel that it’s a winning bike and that I need to fight for top 3 and top 5 in every single session, every single Sprint, and every single GP,” he had said on Thursday.
He also made it plain his patience was starting to wear thin. “It’s really clear from my side. It’s going to be difficult. It’s what I need. I spent many years struggling but now I want a winning bike.”
The bike at the Valencia test wouldn’t be what he based a decision about his future on, Quartararo said. “For Valencia I know the bike will still not be completely ready. February here, the bike will almost be the one we’ll race. I think it’s going to be super important to have what I want in the Sepang test.”
It is hard for Quartararo to be much clearer about his intentions. Yamaha need to bring him a bike he can fight for podiums with every race if they want him to stay after 2026. If he comes to the Sepang test and finds a bike that he believes isn’t capable of that, he will be gone. And given the way the rider market is likely to explode in 2026, with almost everyone out of contract, he is likely to leave the Sepang test with offers of contracts from multiple different factories.
Judging by the current state of Yamaha’s V4, giving Quartararo what he wants looks extremely unlikely. They have a bike without a base setup, without a sense of what the geometry should be, what they need to do to the frame to get it to behave the way they want, and an engine with an unknown performance in terms of top end and acceleration. They need to build a bike capable of fighting for podiums at every race. And they have three and a half months to do it.
It may well be for the best if Fabio Quartararo were to leave Yamaha at the end of 2026. With their superstar gone, the rider who was capable of sparing their blushes thanks to his exceptional talent and ability, they will be forced to actually build a good bike. No hiding behind rider brilliance any longer.
It is reminiscent of what happened at Honda. From one perspective, losing Marc Márquez was a disaster, the only thing keeping HRC in the game. From the other, the €25 million they were spending on his salary could be plowed back into development (a point Márquez himself has made on multiple occasions).
And that is paying off. The Honda RC213V is now a really competitive bike. Johann Zarco found his confidence again and finished second on Friday, and Joan Mir and Luca Marini both have really strong race pace. Both Mir and Marini sang the praises of the Honda.
What has improved on the Honda since the test here back in February? “This answer is long!” Luca Marini exclaimed. “I think we worked well in every detail, in every aspect. We solved a little bit the braking, we solved a lot the entry phase, that at the beginning was a problem. We solved mid corner and turning. Still sometimes we don’t have enough edge grip, this is something that we are going to keep working on, but in the drive area now, it’s very good, the wheelie phase is very good, the aero made a step. But still there is so much room for improvement.”
It wasn’t just the bike, but the whole process that had improved, Marini explained. “I think that all the crew, all the engineers started to work very well, with a good synergy all together. Also with the mechanics. There was never a step back. Every time Honda bring some stuff, we tried, if it was good, we keep it on the bike, if it is bad, throw it away, and maybe another piece arrived. We worked very well, and every GP we made a little step, and never went back.”
The bike was now competitive enough to be fighting for the top five everywhere, Marini said. Maybe even for a podium, if they nailed the qualifying. Which is pretty much exactly what Fabio Quartararo has been demanding of Yamaha.
The experience at Honda points the way ahead for Yamaha. They might even tempt Yamaha’s star rider away to ride for a rival Japanese factory, if they can keep Quartararo out of the hands of Ducati. It feels like Honda are six months to a year ahead of Yamaha. Yamaha has the engineering skills to get to the same place, as the room full of championship trophies in Iwata will testify. But they need to get their heads down and work. There’s still a long road ahead.
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