Yamaha Cemas, Quartararo Has A Honda Hijacked Opportunity

MotoGP Yamaha racer Fabio Quartararo. (Photo: Twitter/@YamahaMotoGP)

JAKARTA - The Yamaha Racing MotoGP principal team, Lin Jarvis expressed concern. He admitted that he was afraid Honda would hijack his rider, Fabio Quartararo.

Quartararo's contract is actually still there until the 2024 season. However, there is an opportunity for the French racer to move to another team, Honda is no exception.

"I don't like using the word'scary'. But I'm aware of that, and one of the threats comes from Honda. Honda always wants top riders, and Fabio is one of them," said Jarvis, quoted from Crash, Wednesday, August 16.

Lin Jarvis' worried feelings are quite reasonable because Yamaha has definitely lost Franco Morbidelli along with the end of MotoGP this season. Instead, Yamaha did manage to sign Alex Rins.

Meanwhile, Quartararo actually still has a contract with Yamaha until 2024, as well as Alex Rins. Until now Yamaha still has the ambition to extend El Diablo's contract after the 2024 season.

However, to be able to realize the contract extension with Quartararo, the Japanese factory team realized that they had to work hard.

One way is to provide a competitive atmosphere. Because if not, Quartararo could have decided to terminate the contract and turned to another team.

Honda has recently been linked to Quartararo. Moreover, there is an issue that Honda will be left behind by its mainstay racer, Marc Marquez.

"To be able to keep Fabio we have to have a competitive motorcycle. We have to really show that with the fact that we are completely focused on building a competitive motorcycle," said Jarvis.

"Next season's race will show an interesting movement. Will Marc Marquez survive or retire, continued Honda or another factory team," continued the British man.

Starting from mid-2022 MotoGP, Yamaha doesn't seem as fresh as usual. But Jarvis believes Yamaha can get up and give Quartararo a competitive YZR-M1 motorcycle.

We have to change the development system. There is still tremendous potential in our motorcycle packages. This season we lost competitive capabilities. But two years ago we won the MotoGP world title with Fabio. In addition, we had time to lead the standings until the middle of the 2022 season," said Jarvis optimistically.

"This is a fact that the European factory team took over (dominated) the Japanese factory team. But a situation like this can happen in the world of racing, in F1 it is the same," he concluded.