Yamaha struggles have left multiple MotoGP winner ‘feeling powerless’

Six-time MotoGP race winner Alex Rins admits he has felt “quite powerless” as Yamaha has struggled to fight at the front of the field in recent years.

The Spaniard joined Yamaha in 2024 after an injury-ravaged sole campaign with LCR Honda in 2023, in which he scored a surprise victory at the Americas Grand Prix.

Since joining Yamaha, Alex Rins has failed to return to the podium, with his best result a seventh in this year’s Australian Grand Prix.

That followed a battle for the podium at the previous Indonesian Grand Prix, where he ultimately finished 10th after taking too much life out of his tyres.

Rins ended the 2025 campaign 19th on 68 points, 133 behind factory team-mate Fabio Quartararo, who achieved a grand prix podium and two sprint rostrums.

Alex Rins’ Yamaha troubles “difficult to accept”

Across 2025, Quartararo was a cut above the rest of his Yamaha stablemates.

But Rins has defended himself and his other struggling Yamaha colleagues, Jack Miller and Miguel Oliveira, noting that none of them “have forgotten how to ride”.

“It’s difficult to accept how things are going for us,” Rins said during the Valencia Grand Prix weekend.

“On the bike, I feel quite powerless, unable to do what I want.

“When I feel good, something like what happened in Indonesia happens, where I find myself in second or third place.

“It’s not the first time, nor the first circuit, where he [Quartararo] is the only one capable of getting something more out of the bike.

“I don’t know if it’s because it’s made more for him. I don’t know if it’s because of the confidence he has with it, after so many years.

“He’s got it down pat, but neither Oliveira, nor Miller, nor I have forgotten how to ride.”

Yamaha has officially retired its inline-four engine and will race with its new V4 next season.

But the Japanese marque has cautioned that the first half of the campaign will be about developing the package and not results.