“I hope he ends up in front of us!” said Alex Rins. I got his wish during practice on Friday when we discussed Augusto Fernandez’s Yamaha V4 debut at Misano this weekend.
Riding the current inline-driven M1, the Monster Yamaha Riderlins finished in 20th and finished just behind the wildcard.
The day that was insisted on direct access to Qualifying 2 on the day that was finished without Yamaha riders – Fabio Cartararo was the best of the M1S at 12th, and Fernandez’s lap times provided the main positive.
“I mean, he’s gotten so fast,” Lyns agreed.
“It’s true that his knee time was amazing and it was great for the bike I was diving into on my first Grand P weekend.”
Pushing on why Fernandez, who was only 1.2 seconds behind Mark Marquez and 0.6 seconds behind Quartararro, lost so much time on the super-fast carbon turn, Lyns suggested that the Spaniards were “attention” to new machines.
“I don’t want to say he doesn’t have enough ball to make corner 11! But during the test, Fabio gave me 0.2 seconds at corner 11, so I trusted me.
Alex Lyns, 2025 San Marino Motogpu
It wasn’t just the Yamaha rider behind the V4 with Pramac’s Miguel Oliveira in 22nd place.
“In the attack on time, we found a lot of yellow flags, so we didn’t have around 0.2,” Lyns said. “But even after improving in those two tenths, they weren’t qualifying two anyway.”
He also reflected Quartarraro’s words that he struggled to extract performances from fresh rubber.
“It was really surprising to us because it was really unstable that we couldn’t take everything from the soft tires when it fits soft,” Lyns said.
“A lot of moments we lost a lot of the rear – in corner 3, corner 8, the bike was “bubbly”.
“It wasn’t an easy day for us. All Yamaha came out of Qualifying 2. Let’s see what happens.”
Jack Miller finished on the 16th between Quartarraro and Fernandez.