Fabio Quartararo outlines Yamaha’s biggest change in MotoGP 2024
2021 world champion reflects on year of change at Yamaha
Fabio Quartararo says Yamaha’s mentality change was the biggest improvement the struggling Japanese MotoGP marque made in 2024.
Yamaha is in the midst of a rebuilding phase as it went from fighting for the championship as recently as 2022 to suffering back-to-back winless campaigns.
A new concessions system allowed Yamaha to continually update its engine across the campaign, with Quartararo noting that the marque was more willing to introduce new units as soon as they were available.
This broke with Yamaha’s traditional approach - and that of Japanese manufacturers in general - of only introducing new parts once they were fully refined.
A key part of this shift has been Max Bartolini coming in as technical director.
“Of course I expected it [performance gains] to be a little bit faster, but the first part of the season, more than the improvement of the bike was the way that we changed working was really important to change the mentality,” he said.
“And also the concessions, I think, helped. When one engine was working, straight away in the next race we had it.
“We didn’t have to wait for the bike to be tested, to have the safety. If it’s working, we put it.
“The first half was like this and the second half I think we managed to get a great step in a few areas, especially in the electronics.”
Asked by Crash.net if it now feels like Yamaha’s old mentality is finally gone, he replied: “Yes. I mean, at least while I’m there it will be like this.
“If not, it will not be able to follow. But we just changed this year. So, it will follow the next years because we feel we made some small steps forward.”
Yamaha’s bike development has been given a boost for 2025 as it partners with Pramac to field two more factory M1s.
It will be the first time that Yamaha has had a satellite team since the end of the 2022 season when RNF switched to Aprilia.
