Miguel Oliveira clarifies status of negotiations with Pramac Yamaha

Miguel Oliveira has confirmed he is in “very positive negotiations” with Yamaha to ride for the Pramac MotoGP squad in 2025.

The five-time MotoGP race winner was officially confirmed as leaving Trackhouse Aprilia at the end of the year when the squad announced on Thursday ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix that it had signed Ai Ogura from Moto2 for 2025.

Oliveira has long-thought to have taken up an option to ride for Yamaha at Pramac next year and confirmed that discussions are being had.

“Well, looking ahead to the future we are in very positive negotiations with Yamaha for the Pramac seat,” he told motogp.com on Thursday.

“Hopefully in the near future, probably in a few weeks, we will be able to discuss this option a bit more.”

Oliveira says the Pramac option is “very attractive” due to the steps Yamaha is taking to improve its bike for the future.

Securing Pramac as a factory-supported satellite team is a key element of this, with the Japanese marque having only fielded two bikes for the past two seasons.  

“I mean, it’s very attractive because also the way Yamaha is looking into the future will pay its dividends soon enough,” he added.

“They have a really strong squad of riders. They have in the factory team Alex Rins and Fabio Quartararo, and I think the key piece they are missing is a really good satellite team with more data, more information, on the same spec bikes to be able to take the project quicker to the desired result.

“Hopefully that will happen and hopefully I will be onboard and see good things coming our way.”

Oliveira is expected to be joined by Jack Miller, who has been thrown a lifeline by Pramac after it looked prior to the summer break that he had no future in MotoGP.

Miller confirmed he has had talks about staying on the MotoGP grid, with Yamaha reportedly electing to take on an experienced pairing at Pramac to accelerate development of its M1.

Yamaha has already hooked 2021 world champion Quartararo and team-mate Rins to new, two-year factory deals to take them through to the end of 2026.