The results speak for themselves: Yamaha had one of its weakest MotoGP seasons in 2023, without any victories despite having top-tier riders like Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli on their roster. The shortcomings of the YZR-M1 were evident from early on and heavily impacted their performance.
The managing director, Massimo Meregalli, admitted to GPOne.com that it was an exceptionally challenging season, where their mission was essentially to do the best they could:
– It was the worst season since I’ve been in MotoGP, also a long one with Sprint races and poor results. Unfortunately, we understood from the beginning that the situation would be tough, and at a certain point, the only thing we tried to do within the team was not to complain but to optimize what we had as much as possible, even though… it had already been optimized in the previous year.