New start at Ducati: Pramac Racing joins Yamaha

Arriving at Assen, Alex Rins, teammate of fabio quartararo at Yamaha, had suggested that an announcement concerning the future satellite team of the Japanese brand was imminent.

The Spaniard did not lie, since this Saturday, the 2021 world champion's team announced its future collaboration with Pramac Racing. This therefore means that next year, four YZR-M1s will be lined up on the starting grid of MotoGP, but also that the Ducati workforce will be reduced to six.

The multi-year program will see close cooperation between the two parties. The riders will also be directly contracted by Yamaha, and the engineering personnel under contract with Yamaha will work with the Pramac team personnel.

Pramac Racing will therefore receive two factory motorcycles for its riders, with the aim of accelerating the growth of the brand. The independent Italian team already benefited from such an agreement with Ducati since 2020. Pramac thus ends a collaboration. history with Borgo Panigale, since the two were linked since the early 2000s.

“We are now entering the next phase of our plan,” confides Lin Jarvis, Managing Director of Yamaha Motor Racing. A phase that we have been looking forward to for a long time: the arrival of a second Yamaha team. The new partnership with Prima Pramac Racing will take a different form than we have used in the past.

Rather than a satellite team, with this new agreement, Yamaha has placed its trust in Pramac Racing, and we will provide them with factory motorcycles of the same specification as used by the Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP team, He continues. The objectives are to accelerate the development of the bike, which remains our priority to return to victory, as well as to have four riders in the MotoGP championship within the two teams. »

An open door for VR46 and Gresini with Ducati?

This announcement could lead to another. With the loss of two official bikes on the starting grid, Ducati could turn to the teams to which it supplies machines from the previous year to negotiate a new deal.

Thus, VR46, just like Gresini Racing, could take the lead to afford the luxury of driving with the latest version of the Desmosedici GP, as Jorge Martin and Franco Morbidelli are currently doing. However, it seems that the Italian brand is moving towards an agreement with the team of Valentino Rossi.

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