Jack Miller has played his part.
Now it’s up to Yamaha to do theirs.
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The Australian MotoGP rider’s commitment to the Yamaha cause was on full display last weekend, Miller giving up part of his mid-season break to race for Yamaha in the revered Suzuka 8-Hour endurance race, Yamaha returning to the 47-year-old event for the first time since 2019 as part of the 70th anniversary of its motorsport history.
Teamed with World Superbikes rider Andrea Locatelli and Japanese 8-Hour stalwart Katsuyuki Nakasuga, Miller finished second for Yamaha as Honda won the event for the fourth year in succession, Miller’s MotoGP peer Johann Zarco joining forces with local endurance veteran Takumi Takahashi.
An eight-hour race at the daunting Suzuka circuit in steaming Japanese humidity – after Miller had hopped back and forth from Europe in between MotoGP rounds to test the Yamaha R1 superbike on multiple occasions this season – showed he wasn’t taking his first appearance in the 8-Hour since 2017 lightly.
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While second place was a step lower than his target, Miller’s efforts won’t have done him any harm in shoring up his MotoGP future, which remains up in the air with just 10 rounds remaining this season after Yamaha had promised a resolution to its rider dilemma before the mid-season break back at the Italian Grand Prix in June.
With Miller’s Pramac Yamaha team having signed World Superbikes star Toprak Razgatlioglu for 2026 after the Aragon Grand Prix earlier that month, Yamaha Motor Racing managing director Paolo Pavesio told motogp.com at Mugello that a decision over whether to retain Miller, out of contract at the end of this season, or teammate Miguel Oliveira, who has a deal with the team for next year, was imminent.
“When somebody comes, you need to make the space and this is not something you want to do, but it’s something which is part of the game,” Pavesio said.
“We also want to give a bit more time to both riders to have a complete assessment and then to make a choice, most probably to one of the two. We are not in a rush in a way, but before the summer break a decision has to be made, also for them.”
PIT TALK PODCAST: Marquez mastery and Miller’s future with MotoGP pit lane reporter Jack Appleyard. Listen to Pit Talk below.
That deadline has been and gone, which appears to be a good sign for Miller.
Even with Oliveira missing three rounds with left shoulder ligament damage after an accident in Argentina in March, Miller has been the standout rider of the first year of Pramac’s alliance with Yamaha after coming across from Ducati, Miller out-scoring (52-6) and out-qualifying (9-0) his Portuguese teammate.
With Yamaha owning an option on Oliveira’s deal if he’s the fourth-best of Yamaha’s four riders in the standings at the mid-point of the season, it appears the five-time race-winner’s MotoGP clock is about to strike midnight.
With less than a fortnight before the resumption of the calendar in Austria (August 15-17), it appears we’ll know Miller’s future by the time MotoGP unpacks in Spielberg for round 13 of the season.
And it’s a future that may have an unexpected twist.
Yamaha has a bigger problem than Oliveira, and Miller – according to a well-placed paddock insider – may be best-placed to fix it.
RINS’ STRUGGLES OPEN DOOR FOR MILLER
Fabio Quartararo’s otherworldly qualifying speed – the Frenchman has taken four pole positions this season on a bike that sits dead-last in the constructors’ standings – shows that Yamaha is making progress from the steep decline it has endured since Quartararo won the 2021 world championship, and that it has the lynchpin it needs if and when the YZR-M1 is ready to fight for more meaningful prizes again.
It also brings the continued struggles of quarterro’s factory yamaha temmate, Spanard Alex Rins, Into Sharper FOCUS.
Rins, 29, has become one of MotoGP’s sadder stories since the middle of the 2023 season, where a horrendous accident at Mugello badly broke his right leg. The six-time Grand Prix winner – he’d won the Americas Grand Prix earlier that season on a second-string Honda – is one of the sport’s most naturally gifted riders, but has been out injured or massively compromised for the majority of the time since.
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It’s not his fault, but Rins is why Yamaha’s A-team is a one-man band fighting with an arm tied behind its back against the might of Ducati, in particular.
This season alone, Quartararo has more than doubled Rins’ points tally (102-42) in 12 rounds, and has outqualified him at every Grand Prix. Quartararo has four poles; Rins has qualified inside the top 10 just twice. In 24 starts across sprints and Grands Prix, Rins has only two results inside the top 10. Since his Mugello career turning point, a rider who had 18 MotoGP podiums to his name has never finished better than eighth (Malaysia, 2024).
Rins’ decline – combined with Miller’s domination of Oliveira and his appearance for Yamaha at Suzuka last weekend – is why MotoGP world feed TV pit-lane reporter Jack Appleyard feels Miller may be in the frame to replace Rins alongside Quartararo rather than stay at Pramac Yamaha alongside the incoming Razgatlioglu, opening up the chance for Yamaha to sign highly-touted Moto2 rider Diogo Moreira to partner the Turkish Superbikes star in an all-new, all-rookie second-team line-up.
Speaking to Fox Sports’ ‘Pit Talk’ podcast, Appleyard feels it’s time for Yamaha to have “some really difficult conversations” with Rins, who is contracted to the Japanese marque for 2026.
“Alex is an unbelievable rider … the talent is obvious,” Appleyard said.
“But it’s clear, unfortunately to everybody, that after that horrific leg break in Mugello that he’s not the same rider any more.
“It’s a very difficult conversation to have because he’s a huge talent and a great guy, but in the position Yamaha are in, if they want to break through to that next level, they can’t have their rider line-up purely based on goodwill. They need to make those tough decisions, be brutal, and choose the right riders who are going to be able to take the project forward.
“Whether that’s paying Alex out of his contract a year early, promoting Jack [Miller] and putting a rookie alongside Toprak [Razgatlioglu] and pramac [Yamaha]that is a scenario that some people see as being quite a good fit.”
Miller’s tenure with three other manufacturers – he’s ridden for Honda, Ducati and KTM in his decade-plus on the grid – has already been invaluable to Yamaha behind the scenes this season, and Appleyard feels his past could be instructive for his future.
“Jack would be able to step into the factory [Yamaha] team, like he has done at Ducati, like he has done at KTM, and bring a wealth of knowledge,” Appleyard said.
“He knows perfectly how to play that second rider role, like he did with [Francesco] Wet [at Ducati]testing items throughout the season, like he did at KTM when he was trying to elevate their level. He knows what his job is, and would be able to do that job very well trying to support Fabio [Quartararo]who we all know will be Yamaha’s leading light next year.
“Commercially as well … Jack is easily one of the most marketable riders on the grid, and having him and Fabio in the factory team, that works for all of the sponsors because they’re going to be able to generate good content on social media, and be able to tell sell the brand wherever they are.
“It works for a lot of reasons, and although Jack said that he didn’t have any answers [about 2026] two weekends ago in the Czech Republic, I’m fairly sure there’ll be conversations at Suzuka where his future will become a lot clearer. Hopefully when we get to Austria, he’ll have some answers for us.”
‘JACK’S HOPING HE’LL BE REWARDED’
While a promotion to become Quartararo’s teammate wouldn’t be a longevity play for Miller, he’s not interested in staying on the grid for a long time, more a good one.
For Pramac Yamaha – which was initially established as a second team for Yamaha with a remit to being younger riders into the sport before it snapped up the available 30-year-old pair of Miller and Oliveira for its first season in 2025 – an all-rookie line-up of Razgatlioglu and Moreira would make sense next season, even if Razgatlioglu will be a 29-year-old MotoGP debutant.
Pramac already fields a Moto2 team with 25-year-old Italian Tony Arbolino and 21-year-old Spaniard Izan Guevara to see if either rider has what it takes to one day step up into the premier class, with the longer-term hope being that one of the promising younger riders kicks the door down to demand a promotion.
Brazilian Moreira, 21, shapes as a particularly intriguing prospect given his rapid rise in Moto2, and that MotoGP is returning to Brazil for the first time since 2004 with a race in Goiania next March.
The longer-term success of Yamaha’s second squad at Pramac will likely only be realised when Miller is long gone from the grid, and isn’t his immediate concern.
Staying in MotoGP beyond the next 10 rounds to end 2025 is, and Yamaha has a difficult decision to make on whether it continues to employ Rins for what he was, not who he has unfortunately become and seems destined to remain.
If Yamaha really wants to move forward, promoting a rider who only ended up there as he had no other options – even for the short-term – suddenly seems the next logical step.
“It’s just a good pairing that will get a lot of people talking,” Appleyard said of a Quartararo/Miller axis.
“Jack wants to stay in MotoGP – there were offers on the table from World Superbikes, but it looks like some of those options have closed … one of those was Honda, and it looks as though [British Moto2 rider] Jake Dixon is going to take that up.
“The Suzuka 8-Hour, that is a huge thing for a Japanese factory … it’s looked upon very favourably. Jack going out there, he’s making a huge commitment and a show of faith in Yamaha.
“I think he’s hoping he will be rewarded as a result of that.”