The tides have turned once again in the MotoGP riders' market, with a reprieve for veteran Jack Miller gaining steam as a likely outcome - which would be at the expense of a promotion for Moto2's standout rider.
Italian broadcaster Sky has reported that Miller, who seemed to be making peace with the idea of leaving MotoGP at the end of the year just a couple of weeks earlier, will be offered a lifeline by Yamaha and its soon-to-be satellite team Pramac, where he is set to partner Miguel Oliveira.
It would then set up a line-up with a combined 261 MotoGP starts, and an overall Yamaha four-rider roster of 476 starts.
The rider left on the sidelines, then, would be Moto2's Sergio Garcia, for whom Pramac is the only realistic route to a premier-class ride in 2025 - with Ducati's ranks all stocked, the vacant LCR Honda ride dictated by seat backer Idemitsu's preferences and Trackhouse looking set to pick up Garcia's Moto2 team-mate Ai Ogura.
There's a suggestion that Miller's status as the grid's sole Australian representative is a major asset here, in making it series promoter Dorna's TV-driven interest that he remains on the grid - which, if true, would at least hopefully put an end to the stereotype that MotoGP prioritises Spanish riders' interests above all else.
But beyond that, for Dorna can certainly not force Yamaha to sign anyone, a move to pick up Miller would send a message, whether deliberate or not, that Yamaha is even more all in on Fabio Quartararo than before.
With Alex Rins struggling badly for fitness, stocking its new satellite partner's line-up with two riders approaching 30 - two riders who have proven themselves capable in both factory and satellite roles but whose ceiling of performance in MotoGP very likely tops out well below 'championship contender' - suggests any championship aspirations Yamaha may harbour even in the medium term lie on Quartararo's shoulders. "If we're in any position to be winning any time soon, he'll be the guy doing the winning."
This is not an unreasonable position to take. Having a star of Quartararo's calibre - a top-five-or-better rider in MotoGP in terms of pure performance in every year since his 2019 arrival - means the rider strategy is at least partially a success. And while he's sounded totally amenable to having a rookie on one of the Pramac Yamahas, he is likely to appreciate being surrounded by so much works team experience - the Suzuki knowhow of Rins, the Ducati/KTM knowhow of Miller, the KTM knowhow of Oliveira.
But a Miller/Oliveira Pramac line-up is incompatible with the biggest MotoGP rider scouring success stories of the recent years: Ducati's satellite team-enabled bringing up of Pecco Bagnaia, Enea Bastianini and Jorge Martin; KTM's Pedro Acosta revolution; or, most pertinently, Yamaha's own success with none other than Quartararo.
Forecasting an alternate timeline can only ever be an exercise in pontification, but given where Yamaha is now I hope you will forgive me for positing this: if Dani Pedrosa took up the Petronas SRT offer he had in 2019, Yamaha would be approaching a decade-long MotoGP riders' title drought right now.
Pedrosa would've been a good signing, but him backing out allowed SRT and Yamaha to stumble into signing The Guy. It took a couple of tests to understand they might have struck gold with Quartararo, and it took just a handful of races to know it.
That paid dividends immediately. And Yamaha is deeply fortunate it did in hindsight, because if it hadn't got in on the ground floor with 'El Diablo', it would not have got a rider of that calibre into its line-up right now. Certainly not with the current M1 that Quartararo is having to drag to respectability every weekend.
But what is the Quartararo success if not inspiration to try more, to go back to the roulette table. He is 25, yes, but not on a lifetime Yamaha contract - there is no guarantee a rival won't be more successful at turning his head in two years' time if the M1 is still not so good at that point.
Adding Pramac, a team with a good prior record for developing works team talent and a total willingness to do it, is a free hit at rider evaluation. And Yamaha wouldn't have had to use that free hit on a gamble like Quartararo was - a rider with all the theoretical upside in the world but with some truly crummy seasons of grand prix racing wilderness, too.
Instead, it has been given a free run at the Moto2 points leader who is currently rising to the top of an elite four-rider Boscoscuro set-up, who has been pretty-good-to-great in every season he has had in the paddock.
Garcia would be no sure thing - virtually none of the rookies are. He has never towered above his peers the way Quartararo did back in his Spanish Moto3 years. But there's clearly something there. And he could hardly be doing more this year in particular - if peaking at the right time is a skill, how about Garcia going from 20th on the first lap to fourth at the chequered to extend his Moto2 lead last time out at Silverstone?
There's no certainty Garcia would go quicker than Miller within a timespan that's enough for Yamaha, or that he would ever achieve as much as Miller has done in MotoGP. Miller, too, was a hot shot in the lower classes of grand prix racing once, as was Oliveira. That's how most of them end up where they are.
But Yamaha chiefs will more or less know what they'd be getting in both. With Garcia, they don't.
How can they resist the temptation to find out? How can anyone, after the lesson of that 'happy accident' 2019 Petronas SRT seat?
