Yamaha have carried out a minor revolution in their MotoGP project by employing a group of Italian engineers led by Luca Marmorini to develop the engine – which has been the YZR-M1’s Achilles’ heel. Lin Jarvis – Managing Director at Yamaha Motor Racing and Team Principal at Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP – explained the background to this decision and what was required from the working group.
In an interview with Crash.net, Jarvis clarified that Yamaha realized it had to have a new approach: ‘After that decision was taken – it all happened more or less at the same moment – we understood that we needed to change the way that we approached engine design and development for the future. That’s when we began the contract with Luca Marmorini and the team of Italian engineers. We changed our organization inside Japan by integrating with this Italian engineering group. The target being to make a big step for the next year.’
Jarvis then said what was the first request to Marmorini and his team: ‘Power, please! The first thing they had to do is to understand what we have. Because [the package] we already have is at a very, very high level; second in the championship and leading for most of the year. Even despite the lack of performance, maybe, that we have been facing – we were in the game, competitive. So you need to understand exactly and precisely what you have and then look at each and every area, using our expertise and their external viewpoint, to find what we can do to improve upon that already high level.’
Without going into details, Jarvis assured that there is plenty to work on in order to improve performance: ‘I’m not an engineer, so I can’t really go into all of the details even if I understand most of it, but there are many areas and many different things you can do to extract the maximum performance from an engine. That’s what they’ve been busy with more than anything else; looking at each and every area and trying to optimize it for the future…’