Although in the last few hours there had been speculation about a possible three-way negotiation for Yamaha to continue next season with a new satellite team, Lin Jarvis , director of the Japanese brand’s races, assured this Saturday on the official page of the championship that will only have two.
“Of course, it’s not an ideal situation. We’ve always had satellite teams, for as long as I can remember. We’ve always had more than two bikes on the grid. It’s never nice when you come to the end of a relationship,” said Jarvis, after the announcement of the separation with the Razlan Razali team.
“We have until the end of the season, we remain partners of RNF. But they made their decision to switch to Aprilia in the future, we respect that decision. I was a bit surprised by yesterday’s announcement, because it came out while we were in a meeting [with RNF] listening to the decision, which was a bit unusual. We respect it and move on”, added the Briton.
Jarvis confirmed the worst case scenario, that a brand like Yamaha, which has been associated with Tech3 for more than two decades and with Razali since 2019, will only have two bikes in 2023.
“We will have two bikes on the grid next year, obviously we have always had satellite teams as well. Actually, all the other teams in the MotoGP paddock have contracts in place with the manufacturers. At the moment there are no alternatives, but that is fine for We are focused on the factory team and getting the bike ready, we will focus and dedicate ourselves to getting our bike in the best shape possible, that’s good and we are confident we can do it with two riders too.”
Although no one involved has wanted to admit it, since the beginning of the year and until today, Yamaha tried to convince the VR46 team to change Ducati for the M1, but a contract prevented progress in that exploration.
“The basic idea of having a satellite team is firstly to get more data by having more bikes on the grid. Hopefully all in a similar speed zone. The second advantage is that you can bring in rookie riders. Our team The factory team is a perfect example at the moment, a few years ago the SIC team brought in Franco Morbidelli and Fabio Quartararo. They caught up and transferred to the factory team.”
“Not having a satellite team makes it more difficult to find new talent for the future. It will be a drawback, but we have two great drivers, young and fast, in the factory team. At the moment it is not going to be a great issue”.
“In terms of obtaining additional data, unfortunately this year the difference between Fabio’s speed and that of our satellite team drivers is not really close. That’s why we haven’t used a lot of data. Frankly if we look at this year and next I don’t see a real disadvantage”, settled the Briton, aligning himself with the opinion of Quartararo, who said that having or not having satellite pilots made no difference to him, since he cannot use their data.
