How was Yamaha to know?
When the relationship with Maverick Vinales had run its course in 2021, the Spaniard finally succeeding in burning his Yamaha bridges to earn an exasperated mid-season command of ‘you can go your own way’ that he quickly parlayed into an Aprilia ride, Yamaha looked well-set.
Franco Morbidelli, though on the mend from knee surgery, was a credible option waiting in the wings, having come much closer to giving Yamaha a long-awaited riders’ title while on an old-spec satellite bike than Vinales ever did in his rollercoaster factory stint.
So, how could Yamaha have known? Well, maybe it knew something – remember, Miguel Oliveira said at the time that he was sounded out as a potential Vinales replacement over Morbidelli, and Yamaha boss Lin Jarvis has now acknowledged consideration was given to bringing Toprak Razgatlioglu over from the World Superbike Championship.
Of course, neither materialised, and Morbidelli was promoted on an extended deal.
In 2022, an out-of-sorts Morbidelli – the affable and sharp Italian looking a shadow of his former self – scored 42 points in 20 races. Vinales had scored 95 in 10 the year prior before having had his deal torn up.
There’s probably a decent chance that, for all his volatility, Vinales would have got Yamaha over the line in the 2021 teams’ championship had any sort of temporary status quo been reached for him to stay on to the end of the season. The constructors’ was probably lost either way – and, in any case, those are of a secondary priority to the riders’ title.
Removing Vinales from the garage took care of a potential distraction, and in the end Fabio Quartararo brought it home last season with relatively little fuss. A temporarily struggling Morbidelli would’ve been an easy trade-off to accept for another Quartararo title the following year.
But, well, you know that’s not how it went down – and you probably know that Yamaha has admitted the lack of fellow M1 riders coming anywhere near Quartararo in terms of pace proved a serious complication.
The two theories
Having quicker Yamaha stablemates in 2022 would’ve helped Quartararo in two ways.
One, as laid out by team manager Massimo Meregalli, is that Quartararo’s M1 peers were not rapid enough to provide him with “reference data” during an event, contributing to limited in-weekend progress in terms of set-up and technique.
Cal Crutchlow’s arrival helped, according to Meregalli, while Morbidelli had one really good weekend – Sepang, where Quartararo admitted he would be studying his team-mate’s data to improve and subsequently came through with an against-the-odds podium finish.
The other way is easier to observe, more external. Quicker Yamahas could take more points off Pecco Bagnaia. As it stands, the collective effort of the non-Quartararo M1s observably denied Bagnaia a measly total of two points across the season – a season for which Yamaha originally had Vinales under contract.
The theoretical 2022 line-up
Vinales had a couple of purple patches during his time at Yamaha – start of 2017 and end of 2019 most obviously come to mind. The final set of races we have as reference for his tenure was nowhere near those heights, and it would be foolish to suggest that he would have been able to rediscover his best form.
But early-2021 Vinales was still a credible factory rider, just in the worst way – in that, between his win in the Qatar opener and his propping up of a Yamaha 1-2 in the Dutch TT in June, he’d fitted in both respectable second-rider performances and weekends of total ‘yikes’ backmarking.
Hindsight has been relatively kind…ish to that stretch. While Quartararo has been ultra-effective with the 2021 Yamaha and its very similar successor the following year, nobody else has meaningfully made it click, with Andrea Dovizioso particularly keen to drive home the point during his failed comeback that only Quartararo could make this M1 sing, and that the Frenchman was so good he had blinded himself to its rear grip deficiency (in addition to the obvious lack of top speed).
Vinales spent the first half of 2021 getting stuck in traffic and gasping for rear grip. He did not understand the performance variance, and indicated Yamaha wasn’t doing enough to help him solve it.
He changed crew chief and it didn’t work. He oscillated between being willing and unwilling to try to copy Quartararo’s settings. He rode an appalling race to 19th at the Sachsenring and was then a victory contender the next weekend at Assen.
And amid all that, he averaged around three tenths of a second off Quartararo in their respective fastest laps of the weekend, and around three tenths off on race pace if you take a trimmed average, removing some of the outlier laps on both ends of the continuum.
Save for the Sepang weekend in which Quartararo broke his finger and an above-average qualifying from Morbidelli at Misano, the other Yamahas just weren’t getting within even three tenths of Quartararo in 2022. For Morbidelli the gap was, on average, just over double that.
Let’s now imagine that Quartararo had Vinales, averaging three tenths off, in 2022. Here are some races where Vinales could’ve feasibly taken points off Bagnaia:
Portimao – Quartararo dominated the race, while Bagnaia was 16 seconds off in eighth. A 0.3s deficit for Vinales to his team-mate would’ve translated to around 7.5 seconds at the flag.
Assen – Quartararo’s race unravelled after he collided with Aleix Espargaro, while Bagnaia controlled proceedings to win. Vinales finished on the podium with the Aprilia, arguably every bit as good as bike as the M1 if not better at that point, but it doesn’t mean he won’t have come closer to beating Bagnaia with the more familiar Yamaha, at a track where he thrives.
Silverstone – Much more of a reach given Vinales already gave it a really good go of beating Bagnaia with the Aprilia, but maybe he could’ve actually got it done with the Yamaha (although, given how much Quartararo struggled and given Yamaha’s lack of top speed, almost certainly not).
Phillip Island – Vinales has been class at Phillip Island, with a considerably stronger record there than Quartararo’s. He could’ve potentially stopped a fairly conservative Bagnaia from finishing in the top three.
Valencia – There were 12 seconds between Quartararo and Bagnaia in the finale. If you take the three tenths baseline, it puts Vinales eight seconds off Quartararo.
All of these are fairly modest gains, some of which require very optimistic concessions to even arrive to 15 points taken from Bagnaia (16 if you suppose Vinales would’ve joined Morbidelli and Darryn Binder in taking points off Bagnaia at Mandalika). Quartararo ultimately lost the title by 17 points.
And, anyway, all that is without taking the worst-case scenario into account, that of Vinales fitting in between Bagnaia and Quartararo in the several late-season races where the Frenchman struggled, making his task even harder.
At the same time, the presence of Vinales, vastly more experienced than Quartararo or even Morbidelli, could’ve yielded some valuable data for the defending champion when it came to the assorted flyaways that made their post-COVID calendar returns in 2022.
Over a conventional season, none of that matters. The Ducati was too quick, Bagnaia too capable of separating himself from his stablemates. But the Italian had spotted 91 points to Quartararo over the first half of the season, so in the end it came down to relatively fine margins, even though the Valencia finale was quite comfortable for Ducati.
The harsh truth
In a vacuum, Yamaha could’ve used Vinales in 2022. Even his indifferent early-2021 form is a clear upgrade on what followed.
Of course, the elephant in the room is that Yamaha did not initiate Vinales’ early departure. The initially agreed exit from the programme at the end of 2021 came at his request, before he helped accelerate it by repeatedly over-revving his engine at the Red Bull Ring.
On the one hand, you cannot really keep a rider who wants out. It would wreck team morale, play out like an absolute nightmare in the media and potentially make him a liability on track. It was probably why Quartararo was completely unbothered to see Vinales go.
In any scenario in which he could’ve helped Quartararo in 2022, Vinales would need to be a compliant team-mate – impossible if he’d already had his head turned by the Aprilia project, or a more general desperation for a fresh start.
And there is probably no version of events in which Vinales is a perfectly happy number two on an expiring deal, willing to sacrifice his own results and aid Quartararo’s while presumably already signed elsewhere (unless Yamaha would’ve somehow talked him into another bewildering extension).
Yet, at the same time, sports teams have made some equally volatile situations work in the past. Vinales is difficult, enigmatic, but he can be reasonable, grateful, a team player. He has sounded regretful about the way his time at Yamaha wound down. “I don’t have anything bad to say,” he told The Race about his past employer last off-season – even if that wasn’t necessarily true during his actual Yamaha tenure.
If his tendencies were being kept in check and his morale was preserved better, if both he and Yamaha (but presumably primarily Vinales) were able to accept their situation for what it was and willing to see out the contract, I genuinely believe he could’ve been an asset for Quartararo’s title defence. Almost certainly not an actual designated rear gunner, but as someone aiding the data collection and occasionally helping to break up the Ducati fleet that had rightly unnerved Quartararo.
Yamaha may argue that’s too many ‘maybes’. Most would. And that’s probably true. Maverick Vinales just simply hasn’t been one to accept his situation. He wasn’t going to ‘waste’ another year.
But the bare facts remain. Yamaha had a volatile but capable rider under contract and willingly released him from his contractual obligations. In doing so, it downgraded its line-up, and that downgrade was unhelpful during a close title race it ended up losing.
