The Yamaha V4 MotoGP bike will be back on-track this weekend (14\u201316 November) at the final round of the 2025 season, the Valencia Grand Prix, and Augusto Fernandez has stressed the importance of the weekend to deciding the \u201cdirection\u201d of development for 2026.<\/p>\n
Yamaha is still yet to confirm it will switch to the V4 engine \u2013 which it has not run at full power yet in either of its two wildcard appearances in Sepang and Misano \u2013 in the 2026 MotoGP<\/a> season, but is pushing ahead with development of the new bike it hopes will, by February\u2019s Sepang test, be at least promising enough to convince Fabio Quartararo to remain in blue beyond the end of his current contract, which expires at the end of next season.<\/p>\n Quartararo, of course, will be on-track with the V4 for only the second time at an official test at Valencia next Tuesday (18 November), but first comes the Valencia Grand Prix, which Augusto Fernandez<\/a> expects to be \u201cimportant\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI’m happy to be back racing again,\u201d the official Yamaha MotoGP test rider said, \u201cand especially to be back racing in Valencia.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI’m looking forward to continue improving the V4-powered prototype and collecting further data.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cIt will be an important weekend to decide the direction to work in during this winter and next year. I can’t wait to get started!\u201d<\/p>\n Quartararo: Portugal \u201cnot bad\u201d, hoping for more at Valencia<\/p>\n With the V4 seemingly on the horizon for Yamaha\u2019s MotoGP project, this weekend\u2019s Valencia race could prove to be the last one for the inline-four configuration it has raced since the inception of four-stroke grand prix racing in 2002.<\/p>\n Far from being sentimental about the YZR-M1 that a he rode to a MotoGP title in 2021, though, Fabio Quartararo<\/a> is looking towards Valencia hoping to be \u201cmore towards the leading group\u201d after a Portuguese round that saw him on the front row and in the top-six in both races.<\/p>\n \u201cMy overall performance in Portugal was not bad: I did enjoy battling in the Sprint and the Race \u2013 and also the qualifying was okay \u2013 but I do hope that I will be a bit more towards the leading group in Valencia,\u201d Quartararo said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s nice to be back here at Ricardo Tormo. It’s not an easy track, but we will give it our 100 per cent, as always, to end this season in the best way possible before we start working on 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Quartararo\u2019s Monster Energy Yamaha<\/a> teammate, Alex Rins<\/a>, stressed the importance of racing in Valencia again, a year on from the floods that killed 237 people, destroyed infrastructure, and \u2013 from a racing perspective \u2013 forced the transfer of the final round to Barcelona.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s great to be back at this track after everything the community went through with the floods last year,\u201d Rins said.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving MotoGP return makes this weekend feel extra special.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe all want to put on the best show possible for the fans here and everyone watching around the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPersonally, I’m hoping to finish the season on a strong note before we kick off 2026 testing on Tuesday.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Yamaha V4 MotoGP bike will be back on-track this weekend (14\u201316 November) at the final round of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[40457,64,39401,63,16230,10671,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-279690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-alex-rins","tag-au","tag-augusto-fernandez","tag-australia","tag-fabio-quartararo","tag-monster-energy-yamaha-motogp","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}