Torak Razgatlioglu achieved his best result as a MotoGP rider when he finished 11th at the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday.
Razgatlioglu He only scored points twice in his first seven starts, with a P13 finish at Le Mans. But Balaton Park’s score is more than double its score.
Razgatlioglu targeted the 10 After winning all three World Superbikes in 2025 in Hungary, he was beaten by KTM’s Brad Binder by half a second.
Where would Toprak Razgatlioglu rank among motorcycle racing’s greats if he won the MotoGP title?
He already has three World Superbike crowns
Razgatlioglu’s result was a commendable recovery from a disappointing performance (P18), even if he was helped by the pitfalls of two Aprilia riders, Raul Fernandez and Fermin Aldeguerre.
Contact the media including Speed ​​week After qualifying, Razgatlioglu said he expected to set a mid-1:37, which he had seen through Q2, but only managed a 1:38.0.
“My motivation dropped right away,” he said. “It’s a disaster for Yamaha.”
For Razgatlioglu, this lack of ‘motivation’ has been a consistent theme since his transition from WSBK to MotoGP.
Even in December last year when he barely tested the bike, Razgatlioglu admitted that it was ‘difficult’ To aim for the final score in the 15th. The three-time WSBK champion used the weekend to dominate the race.
Here are our rider rankings for the Hungarian Grand Prix! Which ones would you change?
Certainly, when the extent of Yamaha’s problems emerged in the pre-season, it served as a harsh reality check.
“I think I’m getting to the mid-57s, but I’m over 59,” he said in Malaysia in February. “Then you know what happens? You just fall. You lose motivation. Because my expectations are two seconds slower than what you see. Seeing that throws off my motivation.”
And then after stumbling his first Q2 appearance by dropping to 18th in the Brazilian Sprint. Razgatlioglu ‘really failed’.
“When everything went wrong, my motivation dropped a lot, because after Friday I was expecting a much better weekend,” he said.
At one level, Razgatlioglu’s loyalty to the media must be acknowledged. It was always a challenge to exchange a title-winning bike for the slowest machine on the grid.
But the Turkish rider knows what he’s getting into when he makes his decision. Yamaha They always saw 2026 as a development year after switching to a V4 engine.
If a team feels their rider lacks ‘motivation’, that naturally hurts morale, and bosses like Yamaha and Pramac need to tell Razgatlioglu.
He had enough time to adjust his expectations. In the year It’s time for him to accept the fight he signed up for, hoping to return to the right top of the grid in 2027.
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