The split with RNF came involuntarily for Yamaha, but they want to keep the time without a satellite team in MotoGP as short as possible, says Massimo Meregalli
While Aprilia and Suzuki were the only MotoGP teams without their own satellite team in recent years, that fate will befall Yamaha next season. While Suzuki will leave MotoGP at the end of 2022, the RNF team will be supplied with bikes by Aprilia instead of Yamaha in the future.
This means that from 2023 Yamaha will be the only brand with only two bikes on the grid, namely those of the two factory riders. A circumstance with which the team is anything but happy. “The fact that we have lost the satellite team is, as you know, not wanted by us, emphasises Massimo Meregalli.
“We were surprised by RNF’s decision and we accepted it. Apart from that, there is not much to say,” the Yamaha team manager expresses his disappointment.
For the future, the brand is again planning with a customer team: “In 2023, there will only be the factory team, but it’s clear that it’s important to have a satellite team and we intend to start thinking about 2024 from the beginning of next year.”
He said that was also important in view of the development of the Yamaha M1, with which only world champion Fabio Quartararo is competitive at the moment. Because this season Yamaha is plagued by the same problem as Honda in the past: only one rider can fight for podiums and victory with the bike.
While Quartararo leads the world championship after eleven races with 172 points, his teammate Franco Morbidelli ranks 19th with only 25 points, while the two customer riders Darryn Binder (21st) and Andrea Dovizioso (22nd) are even further behind.
“It’s true that Fabio is the only one at the moment who can really exploit the strengths of the Yamaha,” Meregalli knows. “But we are working very hard to get Franco back to where he was in 2020: we know his abilities and we will never give up until we reach that goal.”
In 2020, Morbidelli, then still with the Petronas Yamaha team, was runner-up, beating teammate Quartararo. He has not been able to build on that success since. The Italian has a valid contract with Yamaha for 2023.