Yamaha vows MotoGP 2026 misery “will help us” for 2027 rule change

Yamaha MotoGP boss Massimo Meregalli admits that the Iwata factory has endured “not an easy” first half of 2026, but he thinks this year’s struggles will help in 2027.

Yamaha’s best result of the 2026 MotoGP season so far has unsurprisingly come from Fabio Quartararo when the Frenchman was fifth in the twice-restarted Catalan Grand Prix in May.

But the 2021 MotoGP champion languishes down in 14th in the riders’ standings after 11 rounds, while the other three Yamahas – Alex Rins, Jack Miller, and Toprak Razgatlioglu – are down in 19th, 20th, and 21st with two top-10s between them so far this year.

The difficult season for Yamaha was to be expected with its new V4-powered YZR-M1, but switching this year will help in 2027 when the 850cc regulations are introduced, Monster Energy Yamaha team director Massimo Meregalli thinks.

“For sure, not an easy first part of the season,” Meregalli reflected, speaking to MotoGP.com.

“We were aware that it was going to be difficult. We always said that it was going to be a really learning season for us because bringing a completely new project, especially starting to race with it, we were aware that a lot of difficulties were along the track. 

“However, we are learning and this for sure will help us next year when we will introduce the new bike and there will be only one engine configuration that could guarantee a better performance. 

“Now we are in the middle of this season and we know that, since the beginning, we thought that in the second part of the season the aim of all of us was to try to increase the performance and coordinate the results. 

“We will also for sure use this summer break to try to really maximise what we have and what we are going to bring in the second part of the season.”