Meregalli: 2023 season ‘the worst since I’ve been in MotoGP’

Yamaha were winless for the first time in a MotoGP season since 2003 when neither Carlos Checa or Marco Melandri could bring the factory team success.

Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli were unable to claim a win in 2023, which followed a very disappointing end to 2022 when Quartararo was without a win in any of the remaining ten races. 

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Speaking to GPOne, Meregalli said: “Without a shadow of a doubt it was the worst season since I’ve been in MotoGP. It was also a long one with sprint races and poor results. 

“Unfortunately, we realised from the beginning that the situation would be difficult and at a certain point the only thing we tried to do within the team was to not complain, but instead try to optimize what we had as much as possible.”

The cause of Yamaha’s recent struggles has been clear to Meregalli, who admitted that early season form in previous years was due to other manufacturers needing time to understand their bikes, not because of Yamaha making significant steps forward.  

“We suddenly found ourselves in this situation but we had already been improving a little for two or three years, if not four,” began Meregalli. “The problems were always the same. We won in 2021 because we started strong and our opponents had new bikes to sort out. 

“But we suffered in the second part of the championship. The same thing happened last year. We took advantage of the fact we knew our bike very well, but when our rivals found a base, we no longer had anything else. 

“We were able to hide our limits in the last two years because the others had problems at the beginning, but this season they all started strong with competitive bikes.”