The days of MotoGP wildcards and one-offs making a big splash when thrown in at the deep end against grid regulars feel long, long gone.
Troy Bayliss' win in the 2006 finale for Ducati is unthinkable in the modern era, and Dani Pedrosa's 2023 heroics with KTM are a humongous outlier in the modern era. Generally, from the expansion of the calendar to the particularities of the sprint weekend, the campaign nowadays is just too much about rhythm of performance for someone to jump in and star.
So, in that sense, stand-ins have actually been sort of the unsung heroes of the season so far. Pol Espargaro, in the absence of KTM wildcards, was first-rate as Maverick Vinales' stand-in at Brno. Taka Nakagami, fresh off retirement, has been impressive in his Honda appearances.
But the book has been written on Pol Espargaro the MotoGP rider and Taka Nakagami the MotoGP rider, and both are content with drawing a line under it.
One rider who was not content, even as he signed up for a test rider gig at Yamaha, was Augusto Fernandez - who had set out his mission as being to put himself back in the shop window after being cut loose by KTM.
Fernandez's latest outing didn't leave the best impression - he injured Nakagami in a clumsy Brno crash - but overall across the five rounds he has done as well as could be reasonably expected, which is reflected in him having the same amount of points as Pramac Yamaha full-timer Miguel Oliveira, who missed three weekends with injury but has still done more racing than Fernandez this year.
Accounting for the general difficulties of that kind of gig - lack of race fitness, lack of practice time in-weekend - and the Yamaha-specific difficulties - having to hop between the in-development V4 and the conventional inline-four at a moment's notice - Fernandez has performed notably.
On several occasions his pace ended up very much in the ballpark of not just Oliveira, but Yamaha regulars Alex Rins and even Jack Miller, to the point where if you scramble the names you probably couldn't tell right away which one is the test rider. Fabio Quartararo, of course, has been totally out of reach, but that's no indictment.
Fernandez looked totally outmatched in 2024 on a changed RC16, outqualified 20-0 by a rookie Pedro Acosta and made to look the weakest rider on the grid by any reasonable analysis. Now he has held his own against premier-class race winners Miller, Oliveira and Rins while operating at a mileage deficit.
It's quite a sweet outcome. It's also bitter, because Fernandez's stated aim of using this Yamaha role as a springboard onto the grid - which already felt far-fetched at the time he said it - has demonstrably not materialised, even with him getting more races than expected through Oliveira's injury.
Yamaha's line-up isn't settled yet but Fernandez's name hasn't really been in the conversation - not over Miller and Oliveira, not over Moto2's Diogo Moreira. Which is understandable from Yamaha's standpoint. After all, a battle between proven quantities already on the bike, the next crop of talent from Moto2 and a 27-year-old test rider is a battle the test rider can only lose.
How long did it take Fernandez to accept that? Only he will know, but it's clearly happened already. When asked by The Race about his stated mission of returning to the grid and the fact it is clearly not happening for 2026, Fernandez gave a knowing smile before answering: "I'm good here”.
"I'm good. Honestly. I'm better than expected,” he continued. “I'm happy also that the project we have on our shoulders is quite important. I'm enjoying the process, I'm enjoying my job. Yeah, let's focus on trying to bring Yamaha back to the top.
"I think the project is important enough. It's an honour to be part of it."
There are certainly worse things to strive for than being the Michele Pirro of Yamaha's return back to MotoGP relevance. It's just not what Fernandez would have dreamed of when he secured his premier-class promotion during his Moto2 title-winning campaign in 2022.
He hardly got a raw deal. In fact, in an alternate scenario where KTM doesn't decide to cut Remy Gardner loose Fernandez never gets onto the grid at all - or maybe he drops off after one season the year after, when KTM was forced to pick between him, Acosta and the aforementioned Espargaro for its Tech3 line-up.
Still, he will know he could've got more seasons. That he didn't - and that it looks like two years will be more or less the whole thing - drives home that every extra campaign is worth celebrating, and that every extra start matters.
