Setback for Yamaha as Augusto Fernandez endures “long, hard” day on V4-powered M1

The first competitive outing for Yamaha’s V4-powered M1 MotoGP bike fell below expectations, with test rider Augusto Fernandez enduring a “long” and “hard” San Marino Grand Prix sprint race.

While the weekend got off to an encouraging start for Yamaha’s new V4 project, with Fernandez lapping six tenths off Fabio Quartararo’s pace in practice, Saturday was altogether a different story.

Fernandez finished the half-distance race 28s off the lead in 18th, only beating LCR rookie Somkiat Chantra in the list of classified finishers.

While it was hard to ascertain his actual pace deficit, with Yamaha’s benchmark rider Quartararo crashing out early from fourth place, he finished 10s behind the next bike on the road, the factory M1 of Alex Rins. His gap to the highest-placed Yamaha in the sprint, Jack Miller in 14th, was around 11s.

It followed Fernandez qualifying in 22nd on Saturday morning with a time that was slower than his best effort from Friday practice.

The Spaniard explained that tiny changes to the new M1 often swing its behaviour from feeling competitive to being “completely out,” as he highlighted the difficulties in finding the optimum performance window of the bike.

Asked which of the two M1s he feels more comfortable on, the Spaniard said: “It’s the Inline. Now with the V4 sometimes we feel good and sometimes we feel bad, like today.

“We need to find the balance of the bike. We are so close to making a small change, and we are completely out. Then it looks like we are in, but then another change and we are out again. Then the numbers don’t come. 

“We need to keep working because we don’t know. At the end, it’s a completely new bike and the room is very, very open.

“All the numbers that they have in mind from the standard bike, from the inline, it’s not that they don’t work, but they are not correct for our bike right now. We need to be open-minded and look for other numbers. 

“Today was a day of discarding things. Anything that we tried was good, honestly. We took yesterday afternoon as a base for this track and for tomorrow. 

“We hope to find something also because it’s not that we were completely perfect. I had a good feeling on the lap, I think it was a good lap time. Today I was slower than yesterday, so we need to find something. “

Yamaha had completed a number of tests with the V4-spec M1 before it concluded that it was ready for its race debut. However, due to the nature of private testing, Yamaha had no data on how the bike would run in traffic.

Fernandez admitted that he struggled to follow other riders at the rear of the field, while he also lost time due to chattering — an issue that also caused Quartararo’s crash on the standard M1.

“The problem is with the engine right now, it’s hard to be close or to fight for something or arrive at the same speed and have the proper turbulence because you arrive in a bad way at another speed. I realised it now in the race,” he explained.

“Now I think we need to keep working and hopefully tomorrow we can find something because today was a hard sprint, a long sprint, because also some vibrations appeared. 

“Also, the standard bike had some vibrations, so this is something to analyse well because it’s not the chassis, it’s not the engine, it’s something else that we are all having and we are all facing this problem. The vibrations were huge this race. Also, it’s the first time that I had this vibration in this race.”

The V4-spec M1 is essentially a brand new bike, with the change in the engine forcing a complete overhaul of the chassis and aerodynamics. As such, Fernandez’s job at Misano is not limited to evaluating the V4 motor but also how the bike behaves with the new aero.

Asked about the aero performance of the new M1, he said: “Yeah, it’s something else. I’ve tried two fairings during all the evolution [of the bike]. It was a bit better, it was not a huge difference, but it was a bit better than the one I’m using right now. 

“But also, we need to develop this because it’s a new bike, it’s narrow, everything is different. Also, they are working and we are going to have more evolutions of aero for the next wildcards.”