MotoGP: Former world champion Fabio Quartararo set for shock move from Yamaha to Honda for 2027 season - report
Published 29/01/2026 at 12:51 GMT
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The 2027 season is expected to bring plenty of change in MotoGP, with several riders potentially on the move. One of them will be former world champion Fabio Quartararo, who is set to join Honda from Yamaha having grown frustrated with his team's performance in recent seasons. The 26-year-old Frenchman has reportedly signed a two-year contract with Honda.
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Fabio Quartararo is reportedly set to make a surprise switch from Yamaha to Honda for the 2027 season.
The 2021 world champion has been with Yamaha since 2019 and will bring to an end an eight-year spell with the team when he leaves for Honda.
Quartararo has reportedly agreed a two-year deal, according to a report from motorsport.com, with Honda's factory MotoGP team, across the 2027 and 2028 seasons.
El Diablo has won 11 races during his time with Yamaha, finishing on the podium 32 times.
It remains to be seen which Honda team Quartararo will join, but it is expected to be the Honda HRC Castrol squad.
The 26-year-old had already made clear his frustration at Yamaha, with expectations of better performance to help him again compete for a world championship.
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"I’ve spent my entire MotoGP career with Yamaha and have a special relationship with the brand, so for me it’s personal to bring Yamaha back to the top," he said in a newly-released documentary, Fabio Quartararo: Road to Redemption.
"I’m a winner, I want to win and fight for the best positions. I have no time to waste; if we want to get back to the top, we must not waste a single week, not a single day. We have to work hard.
"I need results fairly soon. The only thing that can convince me is getting on the bike, feeling that I’m fast and that I’m having fun.
"When I signed, I wanted to bring good results back to Yamaha, but now I want to think about myself, my future, and my goals."
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Quartararo finished ninth in the 2025 championship standings with 201 points, a huge 344 points behind winner Marc Marquez.
And Quartararo's Yamaha team were sixth in the team standings on 269 points. Ducati Lenovo, by comparison, finished first on 835 points.
"I think the engineers were more focused on the 2026 bike," the Frenchman said when reflecting on the season. "So unfortunately, the improvement of the bike [during the 2025 season] was quite low.
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"But I hope it's for a good reason, to have a really performing bike for 2026."
He added: "Step by step, we improved a bit on the engine power. Unfortunately, not enough, but we worked a lot, especially on the electronics, during this year.
"So the biggest step that we did was the electronics, to understand how I can adapt better, to be faster with less electronics. So this, I would say, was the biggest step that we did."
Stream every race of the 2026 MotoGP season live on TNT Sports and discovery+
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