On November 8, 2015 , Yamaha won its last riders’ title when Jorge Lorenzo became MotoGP world champion for the third time, in Valencia, in the last race, ahead of his teammate Valentino Rossi. In that memorable Grand Prix, the tuning fork brand completed a historic treble with the manufacturers’ and teams’ championships, breaking Marc Márquez’s hegemony for the first time.
After the end of that 2015, in which between Lorenzo and Rossi they won 11 of the 18 races, the atmosphere in the Movistar Yamaha box became unbreathable after the accusations of biscotto made by the Italian. As soon as 2016 started, the Balearic accepted the ordago that the Italian threw at him and signed for Ducati .
The #99 , which dominated the preseason, started its last year in blue by winning in Qatar. The M1s took four of the first six races and Lorenzo was leading the riders’ standings at that point, feeling he had a superior bike to the Honda . However, the rider from Palma relinquished the lead in the seventh grand prix and from there Márquez headed straight for his third MotoGP title.
Yamaha opted for Maverick Viñales as a substitute for the five-time world champion for 2017 . The Catalan, who was the sensation in the pre-season, took the first two races and also the fifth, but from then on he lost weight and finished third in the championship.
After the following two seasons, to a greater or lesser extent, were a monologue for Márquez, his injury in 2020 opened the door to seeing a new MotoGP champion. After a resounding debut a year earlier, Yamaha gave an official M1 within the Petronas team to Fabio Quartararo and the Frenchman did not disappoint at the start. El Diablo won the first two races ahead of his teammate Viñales, and even Rossi got on the podium.
The M1 started well –as in 2016 and 2017–, but Yamaha stumbled over the same stone for the third time and the official riders deflated as the races went by. Quartararo squandered an income that reached 48 points over champion Joan Mir and finished 44 behind him. In fact, Franco Morbidelli ended the year as the best rider of the brand – runner-up in the world – with the only satellite bike.
The tuning fork brand decidedly bet on Quartararo for 2021 and gave him Rossi’s place in the official team. The boy from Nice became the leader of Yamaha based on results and annulled Viñales. The one from Roses (Girona) started the year winning in Qatar, but ended up asking to break the contract, before Yamaha fired him midway through the course after accusing him of sabotaging the bike.
With three races to go in 2021, Quartararo is on the verge of becoming MotoGP world champion, with a solidity that no Yamaha rider has shown for an entire season since the Rossi-Lorenzo era. The 22-year-old driver has been the one who has won the most races (5) and is also the only one who has scored points in all of them.
Before reaching this point, Yamaha has had to go through a long five-year period in which they managed to accumulate 25 races without winning between 2017 and 2018 – their worst streak in the premier class –, also seeing how the M1 satellites were in many moments faster than the official ones.
(Click on this link or on the image to see the photos of Fabio Quartararo’s 2021 season in MotoGP)
