Three-time MotoGP World Champion Lorenzo returned to Yamaha in the winter after retiring from racing in late 2019, but only tested the M1 four times this year in 2019.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Japan-based test team was unable to come to Europe to carry out its planned program, while Lorenzo did not ride any other type of motorcycle between the Sepang test in February and the Algarve excursion in October – the latter ended four seconds behind.
He will be replaced by Cal Crutchlow, who retired from full-time racing at the end of the 2020 season – although Yamaha’s move sparked a backlash from Lorenzo.
Jarvis admits there is no shortage of “disabled” Yamaha testing in 2020, as evidenced by the wildly inconsistent form of its riders this season.
“I think we were disabled this year too. We had a new bike spec with a new engine, a new chassis, but we hardly ran any tests other than the official tests with the factory riders,” Jarvis said in response to one Question from Motorsport.com in Portugal.
“We started this year, we signed Jorge Lorenzo and we had a full testing program planned for this year, but we used the Japanese testing team with some European staff and Jorge.
“In reality we only drove it for two days in Sepang and in the pre-Portimao test.
“All other activities that we had planned for this year were unfortunately canceled. That was negative for us and affected us because we couldn’t work on the problems.
“I still think Jorge would have been an excellent test driver to do this job.”
“All other activities that we had planned for this year were unfortunately canceled. That was negative for us and affected us because we couldn’t work on the problems.
“I still think Jorge would have been an excellent test driver to do this job.”
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Jarvis says Yamaha is “completely confident” that it made the right choice in signing Crutchlow as a test rider for 2021, and believes that his feedback, combined with that of the racers, will allow him to fix the grip issues which 2020 M1 drivers have suffered from over the course of the year.
“Next year is a sign of our intention to take Cal on board,” he added.
“We are absolutely confident that we made a very, very good choice with Cal. I think Cal is a real worker, he is really hungry to get stuck on this project.
“We’re not going to make the same mistake twice, we’re definitely going to have a more intense testing program next year and we believe that with the technical changes we have a lot of information from this year, so our engineers will change.” the chassis next year and they will work to improve that matter.
“Also, based on Cal test feedback and our own pre-season testing, we’re pretty confident that we can fix this next year.”
Lorenzo confirmed last month that he had the option to join Aprilia as a test driver, though that seems to have gone cold as Italian brand retains Bradley Smith and Lorenzo Savadori – both of whom will compete in the preseason to decide who for Will be promoted to a racing seat in 2021.