'Like I am going into war' - Fabio Quartararo’s Honda MotoGP gamble

Misano 2021. A 22-year-old Fabio Quartararo is dancing with a CGI devil along a red carpet hastily laid alongside a section of the Adriatic asphalt. Post-race celebrations are in full flow for France’s charismatic first-ever MotoGP world champion; a stylish and gifted teenage prodigy who made good on his hype in just his third premier-class season.

‘El Diablo’ would not have been able to tell, during that sunny afternoon in San Marino, that the ageing in-line four-cylinder M1’s spark was fizzling out quickly. Ducati and its inventions, together with European peers like KTM and Aprilia, would reignite an increasingly tighter hunt for lap records, top speeds and titles. Ducati would head into an undefeated streak of riders’ and manufacturers’ crowns as the Europeans outthought, outpaced and ‘out-innovated’ the once mighty Japanese.

Quartararo made a spirited but unsuccessful title defence against Pecco Bagnaia and Ducati the following year, and in June 2022 he gathered his (and Yamaha’s) last win to date, in Germany. The ‘dry’ spell has become truly scorched. After last weekend’s San Marino event – round 14 of 22 in 2026 – Quartararo has only climbed a podium once in 61 GPs. It’s a humble feed for an athlete who gobbled 11 victories in the space of two-and-a-half seasons in his rise to the peak of the sport.

Almost half a decade after that momentous day, Quartararo sits across from Motor Sport inside Yamaha’s hospitality in the Misano paddock. The grey interiors seem to reflect the mood. He (annoyingly) looks just as youthful as he did in 2021, but there is a weariness to his demeanour. “The results are not showing the same as five years ago,” he half-smiles and understates, “but my potential is better. I’ve been in a tough moment for a long time. I want to go back to what I do best: that’s to ride a motorcycle to the limit, but I need to feel well on the bike to do that.”

There is some initial caginess to his third interview of the day. He has already conversed in French, Spanish (of which he is fluent) and English, and he has been chatty of late. Quartararo’s frequently veiled comments of disappointment to the media with Yamaha’s protracted development cycle – in 2026 involves an admirable but mammoth introduction of a brand-new motorcycle and V4 concept – have become blunter.

Quartararo started 2026 by saying “we are not in a position to be fast” at round one in Thailand. Subsequent remarks have referenced Yamaha’s lack of progress and his powerlessness to perform while revealing his impatience. His transfer to Honda and HRC for 2027 and 2028 was heavily rumoured before Quartararo even raced the V4 and threw a pale backdrop to the fading relationship that now reaches seven seasons and is the joint-longest in MotoGP.

In Misano last Thursday, Quartararo admitted that he and Yamaha had had “a private business meeting” after the Grand Prix of Aragon in a bid to suppress further public tension for the final three months of the term. “I think with frustration we said things that were maybe not right,” he admitted in his media scrum. “We got a meeting last week together and everything was sorted out.”

He’s not the first to endure the mental wear of mechanical malaise, of course. Marc Márquez diplomatically departed Honda with the same concerns and Bagnaia’s Ducati chapter is also finishing curtly.

Quartararo is, however, the last great star of Yamaha’s previous golden streak in MotoGP that began with Valentino Rossi in 2004 and involved Jorge Lorenzo and Maverick Viñales. He was a satellite rider for his debut in 2019 at a time when the Petronas squad – that would rotate into the Trackhouse Aprilia team – had less technical equality and billing to the factory set-up of Rossi and Viñales.

“I still have in mind the first time he jumped on a MotoGP bike; it was in Sepang and he was in Petronas and he surprised everyone because from the first laps he showed incredible speed and became, quite soon, the reference in Yamaha even if he was in a satellite team,” recalls current Yamaha MotoGP team director Massimo Meregalli. “The Jerez pole position in his first year was incredible. Nobody else could make the corner speed. Checking the data they [the other Yamaha riders] could see the speed, but they could not do it.”

Quartararo and Yamaha became victims of the young Frenchman’s own brilliance, like the unique scenario that Marc Márquez brought to Honda. After the 2021 opener in Qatar, won by Viñales, Quartararo would then forge a lone furrow as the brand’s standout racer. “The problems we started to have year-on-year were ‘covered’ by him and what he could do,” Meregalli admits. “Valentino had problems, also Maverick and Dovi [Andrea Dovizioso] but Fabio was still very fast. He covered the problems, but then the limits that he had from the beginning started to become [more of] an issue.”

Yamaha’s funk was partially self-imposed. Lorenzo’s championship win in 2015 was the last until 2021. “If you lose one or two years in racing [without success] then [in reality] it is more,” Meregalli admits. “We had some [structural] problems, and Valentino underlined them ten years ago but, somehow, we kept them. OK, we had the best riders and the bike was working well and maybe the others were not as good as they are now: all this allowed us to survive, but not to progress.

“There is a big competition between the manufacturers,” he adds. “Ducati really moved the performance and the technology to a high level and other European manufacturers have been very active and quick to react. For us it has been different, but now we have reinforced with staff from others and we are improving the knowledge. Now we are really running, but the others are not waiting!”

The company is ‘pinning the throttle’ for 2026 to reverse the stasis. The results sheets show another barren campaign so far but behind the scenes there is a swirl of change. “I think everybody who is involved in our project now would agree that there is a different way to work,” Meregalli said. “There is a really good interaction between Europe and Japan that, in the past, probably wasn’t needed because everything was developed in Japan and managed, logistically, in Italy. It is not like this anymore. Our workshop [in Lesmo, Milan] is getting bigger and bigger. We are developing many things: the aerodynamics and the electronics. There is more synergy between YMR [Yamaha Motor Racing, in Lesmo] and YMC [Yamaha Motor Corps in Iwata].”

It is this activity that Quartararo foresaw (or was promised) when he signed his last contract extension at the beginning of 2024. Any doubts he had then would have been allayed by a deal that made him one of (if not the) highest-paid riders on the grid. His act of faith and Yamaha’s desire to keep one of the sport’s generational talents underpinned the persistence with the slow turn. He scored five poles in 2025 as the firm brought an upgraded inline-4 into action with more horsepower and came close to victory at the British Grand Prix before his rear ride height device failed. The Frenchman’s gestures of despair were one of the most heart-wrenching scenes of recent years.

“In 2023 and 2024 the results were not there but in 2025 I felt potential in qualifying and took those opportunities,” Quartararo says of the last hurrah for the inline M1. “I was fast. For myself, I was able to say: ‘I know what I need, and I can do it’. It made me feel like I was not losing. I knew my capability.”

Ironically, those fleeting brighter days in 2025 probably accelerated Quartararo’s urgency. When he tested the raw V4 in September that year he felt a glimpse of 2026 with the scale of the job ahead. “When we tried the bike in Barcelona the feeling was not super good; that is normal because the project was brand new but the feeling is really, really similar compared to September,” he said in Thailand this March. “We expect to make a much bigger step but unfortunately, we did not. So…we started already much slower than last year.”

A path away then became more probable. He wanted to compete, and to relish his job once again and was tired of testing; something that Yamaha exercised to the full thanks to the most generous tier of MotoGP’s technical concessions rules.

During 2024, he often made a ‘thumb to the chin’ gesture to describe how he was pushing the M1. The despondency hadn’t really abated by the first throes of 2026. “It is difficult because, being honest with you, I am not really enjoying the situation because I cannot push myself to the limit, like last year in qualifying,” he said in Misano. “I was able to enjoy myself [last year]. Now I am not having a fun time on the bike but sometimes, like Le Mans this year, which was much better than expected, you take the moment and enjoy it.”

He will be 28 in the first months of the 2027 season and priorities are more pronounced as the clock ticks. Someone of Quartararo’s ability should have more than one championship and 11 victories. “I don’t want to make a long career, like Rossi, this is way too long,” he added. “Like Johann [Zarco, now 36 and the oldest rider in MotoGP] also. I want to perform and feel myself competitive as soon as possible and that’s why I am really looking forward to next year.”

He also comes across as obsessive, driven. A perfectionist. His Instagram account shows the trappings of a successful, single athlete: bold fashion choices, private jets, yachts, celebrity friends and in the last three years Quartararo was able to find distraction from his dwindling sporting spoils through fitness and a seemingly endless lifestyle of exercise around his home of nearly eight years in Andorra.

“I’m training for the bike but also my general condition. I have an obsession with my weight: to not be over 70.5kg and I am always there,” he explains, on what seems like a mental coping mechanism. “If I’m bored at home then I might be on the phone for an hour but then I’ll put it down and think ‘what shall I do?’ and I’ll run, stretch or whatever; it’s the routine of my life. I’m really hyperactive. I need to do something useful for my body and myself. I train a lot for that, and sometimes too much.

“I am one of these guys that gain weights easily,” he says with surprising gravity. “I’m jealous of these people that can eat what they want and stay skinny. If a great dessert is in front of me then I have to finish all of it. This why I like cycling now because you burn a lot of calories. It’s a six-seven-year obsession. It’s psychology, but I am like that.”

There has been a different type of ‘famine’ at grands prix. In Misano 2021 he was mobbed and feted. In 2026 his 10th position was just the fifth top-10 classification of the campaign. Is there resentment at the fade of relevance, profile or interest? It appears there isn’t. “You are the image of the sport, of the race or of the moment; it’s normal that people want to know more about the people that win than the one who is 16th!” he smiles. “I’ve experienced that. I remember in 2021-2022 I was complaining because the media [duties] were really long! I had all the TV [interviews] to do and now when we finish, it is only one or two. So, if there is a lot of TV work, then it’s a good sign! It’s part of the game. Normal.

“It’s like a dog; when he doesn’t eat for three days as soon as you give him food, then he will attack. This is how I feel.”

Quartararo, together with Zarco, has helped forge the French Grand Prix at Le Mans into an attendance record-busting spectacle, a bucket list event for atmosphere and the definitive MotoGP experience. His transparency has endeared him to many fans outside of his home country. Whether it’s his sartorial taste (the pearls in 2025 gathered plenty of chat), the otherworldly feats to always bend the Yamaha to his will or his mental state.

“He might not agree with what I am saying, but his weakness is that sometimes he is not able to manage the emotions,” offers Meregalli. The Italian does, however, understand Quartararo’s eroding tether, especially as Yamaha had their own recent grievances with engine output, although new chassis components were coming by the time of the Aragon GP.