A "pretty ridiculous" performance from Yamaha at the Austrian Grand Prix was the worst weekend any manufacturer has had so far in 2025.
None of the four M1s qualified higher than 16th, and while the start chaos enabled Fabio Quartararo to come home a competitive 11th in the sprint, the Yamahas were embarrassed in the full-distance race, with every other manufacturer's riders going past them at will.
The four riders completed the order on Sunday, with Quartararo in 15th the highest-placed rider again - but 25 seconds back from race winner Marc Marquez, and seven seconds back from 14th-place finisher Ai Ogura, who pulled away from the M1s with ease after clearing Jack Miller.
Austrian GP fastest laps
1 Marco Bezzecchi (Aprilia) - 1m29.533s
...
17 Jack Miller (Yamaha) - 1m30.477s
18 Alex Rins (Yamaha) - 1m30.544s
19 Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) - 1m30.717s
20 Miguel Oliveira (Yamaha) - 1m30.7634s
Quartararo said that, from what he saw, his Yamaha wasn't quicker than Aprilia's Ogura at any point on the track.
"You can see four bikes in the same position - the last four," he said. "It's pretty ridiculous.
"Nothing to learn, nothing I could feel. It was pretty useless. I didn't feel I am going away from Austria with something I've learned.
"I felt no potential from the beginning of the weekend and we didn't improve. Also if you check the pace we had - Friday afternoon looks good, then on the race it completely changes and we are so far, so far away.
"What we do in the practice - basically we can go straight into the race [without practice] and it doesn't change anything because the bike is completely different."
The satellite Pramac team's Miguel Oliveira said it was "quite a frustrating race as a rider" and "one of the worst races I've had" because it was immediately clear it was a lost cause.
"The ranking doesn't really matter, who was the first Yamaha, the second, the third," he said.
"Because when you're at the bottom of the timetables, it's quite irrelevant.
"We have no grip. We have no grip to accelerate out of the corners. We lack a lot of help from the rear to just dip into the corners and actually turn faster. It's the reality."
Where did the grip go - and why were the M1s particularly helpless on Sunday?
Honda rider Luca Marini, who overtook all four of the Yamahas on Sunday, explained it as being a combination of the Yamaha's lack of affinity for the special rear tyre used at the Red Bull Ring and the bike seemingly struggling for fuel mileage.
Miller corroborated both, having run out of fuel at the very end of the race, but it was the tyre that he was confident was the biggest issue.
The Red Bull Ring is one of the tracks where tyre supplier Michelin uses a rear tyre with a harder construction.
"The rear tyre is particularly stressed during acceleration phases and generates a lot of heat. Our specific 'Red Bull Ring' construction, used here for several years, helps us control this factor and maintain consistent performance to the chequered flag," explained Michelin MotoGP boss Piero Taramasso.
And Miller was clear that the M1 just couldn't extract performance out of this rear tyre.
"It's quite clear on paper this weekend. Our bike doesn't gel together well with this rear tyre, with the circuit...I don't even think it's the circuit.
"This rear tyre, with the construction, the way it is, with rubber - it just doesn't work [for us]. There's no way to find traction.
"In the race I tried everything I possibly know how to do to find traction - whether it be short-shifting, whether it be being super patient on the throttle, whatever. Doesn't matter what it did, you arrive to a certain point, and I feel - I'm not a human speedometer, but it feels like around 120-130km/h, once the forward momentum is kind of enough, we just start to lose load on the rear, the bike starts to spin like mad, and you can't do anything about it.
"The front end of this bike is phenomenal, I was killing it in the braking, killing it in the entry, but even entry to mid-corner, Turn 6, Turn 7, corners where this bike goes all right, you try and push a little bit more and it's not the front tyre that's really the limit, it's the rear, lateral slide from the rear."
Miller said he "felt like a bastard" fighting other riders and desperately trying to hang onto position as he knew the bike just didn't have the performance to do it.
"I think in terms of what we have at the moment, we are blocked [in terms of improving this]," he said.
"We can't go any lower on the pivot, we can't go any smaller with the gearbox, we can't do anything to try and relieve chain force - and that, I feel, is the biggest issue for us.
"When there's four of you [at the back], for example in qualifying we are all four within three tenths, and Fabio is probably one of the best in the world on one lap. It says a lot."
