Both in terms of the points haul and in terms of performance, the Malaysian Grand Prix represented the clear highlight in Yamaha's generally-anonymous 2024 MotoGP season.
Two Yamaha M1s finished a MotoGP race in the top 10 - a season first.
Fabio Quartararo flashed borderline podium pace for much of the weekend - a season first.
Alex Rins was genuinely competitive for more than the final points-paying position - a season first.
The pair combined for 23 points - a season first, with the previous high watermark being 14.
The response from the two Yamaha riders, though, was one of satisfaction but hardly one of jubilation. And part of that will be that, in the wider context of both Yamaha's MotoGP history and the CVs of Quartararo and Rins, sixth and eighth place are table scraps.
But it's also clearly because, while Yamaha has made progress, the evidence that it has made huge progress is, for now, incomplete.
The case for scepticism
A cursory look at MotoGP's last two Malaysian Grands Prix side by side from a Yamaha perspective could suggest that between the two visits to Sepang it has simply stood pat, if not slid back ever so slightly, in the competitive order.
Quartararo was third in the Saturday morning practice that's always used for race runs - well, he and then team-mate Franco Morbidelli were first and second in the same session last year. Quartararo was 1.255 seconds off pole this past Saturday - he was under six tenths off in the corresponding session last year.
In the grand prix, Quartararo finished 16s back over 19 laps, whereas last year it was 15s back over 20 laps. Rins was 20s back - his predecessor Morbidelli was 18s off the win in 2023.
Those are all margin of error numbers, albeit with the important caveat that on average the 2024 M1 has been a clearly weaker proposition - in relative terms - than its 2023 predecessor.
Yamaha debuted a new engine spec this time at Sepang - its inline-four engine development obviously continues even while a V4 unit is being readied for the medium term - but the suggestion is that its impact on the weekend result has actually been negligible.
Instead, both Quartararo and Rins pointed to a philosophy change in regard to the electronics set-up - a change Quartararo says has been driven by Yamaha's Ducati import Max Bartolini - that seems to have given the riders more manual control.
It's what Rins has been chasing - it's what he says he had at Suzuki and has been missing at Honda and Yamaha. And there have also been gains on the engine braking side, which among other things are supposed to ameliorate the M1's struggles to make use of the rear tyre in braking, even when it's successfully kept in contact with the ground.
But it hasn't been a silver bullet - Quartararo was keen to accentuate that.
"I don't think it's the key," he said. "But we will never gain half a second by only one thing.
"I think we have to find half a tenth [everywhere] - half a tenth by electronics, half a tenth by the swingarm, then the power, half tenth there.
“And we made a step, clearly, in this area, and there are many more steps to do.
"But the good thing is we have a lot of ideas that we haven't tried yet. And the winter will be busy for the engineers."
Sepang isn't a track that will punish the grip level-dependence of the M1 that Quartararo has highlighted over and over again this season, nor will it expose its struggles in bringing the tyres up to temperature.
There was an argument to be made that the Yamaha was the second-best manufacturer at Sepang last weekend - maybe not over one lap, where it still seriously underwhelms, but in race pace.
But how much of that is a reflection on its progress, and how much of that is KTM having a bit of a messy weekend and Aprilia being in a late-season tailspin?
The case for optimism
If we do move the point of comparison slightly, though, there is at least a suggestion of linear progress.
The Yamaha obviously couldn't live with the 2023 Ducati last year, but this year, while that bike was generally out of reach in Marc Marquez's hands, Quartararo was not all that far off Alex Marquez - who is a super-credible reference point at Sepang.
More pertinently, though, the fact Rins brought it home in eighth, just four seconds behind Quartararo, and yet was almost lukewarm on his weekend as a whole, suggests an awareness that the Yamaha's ceiling in its lead rider’s was actually maybe a fair bit higher.
Practice pace is never great evidence of that, but Quartararo would've been quicker in a standard-issue grand prix. The first-lap pile-up he was part of initially meant that he was in damage limitation mode from the restart.
The crash forced a change to a spare bike equipped with a medium front - a tyre Quartararo didn't like and hadn't run much, favouring the soft - and a lightly-used rear tyre.
How much laptime was left on the table as a result only he and Yamaha will really know but it won't have been nothing.
And remember that new engine spec, one that was supposed to add some top-end power, one that looked "clearly better" coming out of testing? Well, on Quartararo's side the new-spec unit expired immediately on Friday, and he'd spent the rest of the weekend running the standard version. And it also meant that his spare bike was equipped with an older engine, up there in lifespan and thus limited in terms of power, when he switched to it unplanned on Sunday.
There are low-hanging fruit for Yamaha to grab, and whatever the asterisks at Sepang the overall trend in the second half of the season has been a promising one.
Was that also the case in 2023, and Yamaha being flattered by the make-up of the calendar? Very possibly. And the finale, moved to Barcelona, will be the real test.
But considering how grim things looked at the start of the year, everyone on Yamaha's side will relish seeing these glimpses of light at the end of the tunnel, rather than just sitting around and waiting for a V4 revolution.
