Fabio Quartararo is ready to switch to Yamaha's new V4 engine for the 2026 MotoGP World Championship.
Heading into the final two rounds of the 2025 MotoGP season, Fabio Quartararo is of the belief that he will switch to Yamaha's new V4 engine in 2026.
The 2021 MotoGP World Champion is ready to change engines and start the new stage of his career. However, he is aware that Yamaha may make the decision to remain with the Inline-Four engine, if the V4 'doesn't respond as expected'.
"Not knowing how the V4 works yet, I don't know if I'll miss it," Quartararo said when asked if he would miss his Inline-Four engine.
"It's definitely good to change, but maybe I'll miss it next year. In any case, it's a new step in my career. We will see how it goes. From what I understand, these will be the last two races with the Inline engine.
"For me, it is ninety-nine percent that way. The remaining percentage is only because, if it does not respond as expected, someone might ask to go back to the inline-four, but it is going to depend on Yamaha."
'We are still far off in terms of performance...'
Despite being ready to use the V4 engine in 2026, Quartararo is aware that the V4 is still not up to scratch due to the performance gap between Augusto Fernandez and his fellow Yamaha riders at the Malaysian Grand Prix.
"I had a chance to talk to Augusto [Fernandez] about the new M1, since I had given him one of my swingarms in Sepang in an attempt to mitigate the vibrations he was feeling," he explained.
"Although the situation improved after that, the result showed that we are still far off in terms of performance. More than looking at the data, to date, it is crucial for the engineers to try to figure out how to close the gap.
"The focus of the engineers was more on 2026, so progress from Thailand to date has been limited. I hope it was worth it and that the next bike will perform better because, as a rider, it was hard.
"Overall, progress has only been slightly made on the engine, while the large work has been on the electronics. We tried to figure out how to be performance-orientated by having less at our disposa."
