You’re like a lamb to the slaughter

Jack Miller says Yamaha’s lack of straightline speed in MotoGP leaves him feeling like a “lamb to the slaughter”, but the Australian has not lost faith in the marque’s ambitious V4 project.

Yamaha has slipped even further behind its rivals in MotoGP this year after redesigning the M1 over the winter to accommodate an all-new V4 engine. 

The new motor remains significantly down on power compared to the competition, while the broader changes to the bike have also eroded some of its traditional strengths — leaving Yamaha without a “single strong point” according to factory rider Fabio Quartararo.

Last month’s US GP featured the sobering sight of all four M1s circulating at the bottom of the pack, with Pramac rookie Toprak Razgatlioglu leading the quartet in 15th place in another tough weekend for the Iwata-based brand.

Yamaha’s deficit was particularly evident over Austin’s long straights, with factory rider Alex Rins only touching 342.4km/h on the speed trap, losing nearly 6km/h to Ducati’s Marc Marquez. The gap was even more pronounced for Quartararo and Razgatlioglu, who were the slowest two riders in a straight line — more than 10km/h down on the best figures.

While Miller has generally struck a more optimistic tone about Yamaha’s 2026 prototype than his team-mates, he highlighted the scale of the challenge with a vivid analogy.

“It’s a working project and we’re trying to get through it as much as we can,” he said during the US GP weekend. “But we’re keeping our heads down, keep working and trying to fight to the end of the race.

“We’re trying to open it up [on straight], you’re like a lamb to slaughter a little bit. The stick is peeled off you, every time down the back straight.”

The Austin sprint offered Miller a chance to directly compare the M1 with Ducati’s title-winning 2025 bike, as he battled VR46 rider Franco Morbidelli for 16th position.

Miller initially did well to hang on in the fight, despite struggling to maintain tyre pressure, but eventually lost a drag race to the faster Ducati.

“I had Frankie behind me. We got a dive bomb on the second-last corner and we came out together at the last corner,” he recalled. 

“I was a little bit in front. Then we had a yellow flag up at Turn 1. By the time we got to that, I couldn’t really dive bomb or do anything there to sort of hold him back.

“Then once we opened the taps [on the straights], you can’t do anything better.”

Upgrades in the pipeline

The extended break in the schedule, caused by the Qatar GP being moved later in the year due to the Iran war, offers Yamaha a chance to develop and introduce new parts at the Spanish Grand Prix on 24-26 April.

A post-race test at Jerez will be equally important for development, especially as rival manufacturers increasingly divert resources to 2027 prototypes.

Miller remains optimistic that the start of the European leg of the season will bring a ray of hope for Yamaha.

“We’re heading back to Europe now,” he said. “We’ve got three weeks off, so fingers crossed we’ll be able to have some updates for Jerez.

“We definitely need a new swingarm and a new chassis. I know those things are in the works, as well as obviously trying to adjust the engine a little bit.

“Hopefully, come Jerez, we can be a little bit more competitive, hopefully. And as the season progresses, we try to get better. It’s not through lack of trying.”

Jack Miller, Pramac Racing

Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images

“Championship slows down for nobody”

Yamaha committed to the V4 project relatively late last year, and it wasn’t until the Valencia finale in November that it formally announced the switch. As such, just ensuring its new bike was ready to start the season was itself a significant challenge.

While acknowledging Yamaha’s efforts over the winter, Miller stressed MotoGP does not ‘slow down for anyone’, and the team did not even have time to ‘catch its breath’ after rolling out the bike in pre-season testing.

“We’ve got a lot of engineers going back to Japan now, even the Italian ones, to do some work back there, as well as try to push as much as possible,” he said.

“These are desperate times. The problem is the championship slows down for nobody, so we need to try and make the most of it while we can, obviously, and we keep pushing every time.”

He added: “The big hurdle was getting four bikes on track. We crossed that. You kind of land, catch your breath for a second, but you don’t even get to catch your breath because you then get the influx of all the data through our testing, everybody saying ‘this is shit’ and ‘that’s shit’. That’s what riders do at the end of the day. 

“So, you try and decipher what they really want from said comments and try to make improvements accordingly. 

“You’re extremely naive if you think it’s going to just work from the get-go.”

That said, Miller felt much more confident about Yamaha’s prospects at the end of the US GP weekend, adding: “I’m happier today than I have been all year. I felt like we had a good pace towards the back end of it. I did a solid race myself, so on a personal note, I’m happy.
It’s just we need to be better together as a team.”

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— The Motorsport.com Team