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The Yamaha YZF-R6 Returns to the USA for 2022…Sort Of

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Last year, Yamaha announced that it was ceasing production of its popular YZF-R6 sport bike for the street, effectively killing the most popular 600cc supersport on the market.

The move was a sign of the times, and a glimpse into the Japanese brand’ unwillingness to update the platform for the stringent Euro5 emission standards in Europe.

With no European market to help bolster sales, the news also meant that the Yamaha YZF-R6 would cease for production as a street bike in the United States as well. But, there was a silver lining.

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MotoGP

The Difficulty in Replacing Maverick Viñales: Will Morbidelli or Rossi Move to the Factory Team?

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Maverick Viñales’ decision to leave Yamaha at the end of the 2021 season raised all sorts of questions.

Who would take his place in the factory Monster Energy Yamaha team? Can Franco Morbidelli be bought out of his contract with the Petronas SRT team? And if Morbidelli goes to the factory team, who do Petronas take to replace Morbidelli?

Valentino Rossi added another layer of complexity to those questions at the Styria Grand Prix by announcing he would be retiring from MotoGP at the end of this year. Now, Yamaha had not one, but two seats to fill.

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MotoGP

MotoGP Preview of the Austria GP: Spielberg’s Bad Vibes

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The Red Bull Ring has faced much criticism in the six years since MotoGP started going back there, mostly about the safety of the riders on track. But one thing that gets overlooked is the circuit’s propensity for generating drama off track.

In 2020, we had Andrea Dovizioso announcing he would not be racing with Ducati again in 2021.

In 2019, we had the drama with Johann Zarco splitting with KTM, with additional drama around Jack Miller possibly losing a place to Jorge Lorenzo, who would return to Ducati to take Miller’s place at Pramac.

The year before, Yamaha had held a press conference in which management and engineers officially apologized to factory riders Valentino Rossi and Maverick Viñales for building a dog-slow bike that left them 11th and 14th on the grid.

Spielberg was the place where Romano Fenati got into an altercation with the Sky VR46 Moto2 team, and was sacked in 2016.

So much discord and division. Perhaps the circuit is built on a conjunction of ley lines, or perhaps the Spielberg track was built on an ancient cemetery where the contemporaries of Ötzi were buried.

Or perhaps the middle of a MotoGP season is when tensions generally reach boiling point. The latter explanation is the most likely, perhaps, though a good deal less entertaining.

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MotoGP

Franco Morbidelli Will Move Up to the Factory Yamaha MotoGP Team

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Franco Morbidelli is to race for the Monster Energy Yamaha team next year.

Speaking to us, Yamaha Motor Racing Managing Director Lin Jarvis confirmed that the Italian is to move up to the factory team for the 2022 season, once the details of the contract have been sorted out.

Jarvis was speaking to us as part of a much larger interview to be published after the Austrian round of MotoGP.

Morbidelli’s move to the factory team is a result of a situation which was hard to imagine at the start of the 2021 season. Back in January, Yamaha looked to have one of the strongest rider lineups in MotoGP.

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MotoGP

Maverick Viñales’ Weird & Wild Weekend in The Netherlands

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I was supposed to have an interview with Yamaha Racing managing director Lin Jarvis this weekend, arranged well beforehand. That ended up not happening, unsurprisingly.

Lin Jarvis had more important things to deal with than answering my questions. And my list of questions seemed a good deal less relevant this weekend than they had a few days earlier.

For this weekend was all about Maverick Viñales. Whether he, or we, wanted it to be or not.

The Monster Energy Yamaha rider (but not for long) arrived at Assen after finishing dead last at the Sachsenring, topped both sessions of free practice on Friday, had an explosive meeting with Yamaha on Friday evening, secured pole with a blistering lap on Saturday, then found a way to only finish second on Sunday, well behind his teammate Fabio Quartararo.

Oh yes, and there were the reports that he had signed for Aprilia for 2021 on Saturday night as well.

The last time we had a weekend like this was at Austria in 2019, when Johann Zarco announced that he had asked KTM to terminate his contract with immediate effect.

But, though that rupture was more dramatic, Zarco stepping away with immediate effect and leaving KTM scrabbling around for a replacement rider, at least it made sense from a results perspective.

Zarco had had one top ten finish and one front row start, after three podiums in each of the preceding two years.

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A&R Pro

The Supersport Segment Reboot – A Story About the Yamaha YZF-R9

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Yamaha is in the midst of redefining its sport bike lineup. The first step was to kill off the popular and iconic YZF-R6 supersport, but that left a massive hole between the R3 and R1 models.

To help fill that void, Yamaha recently debuted the Yamaha YZF-R7, but while the 75hp / twin-cylinder platform makes for a good stepping stone from the R3, an R6 replacement it is not (and never was supposed to be).

That duty will likely fall to another machine, whose name has been spotted in government documents: the Yamaha YZF-R9.

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MotoGP

Official: Maverick Viñales Will Leave Yamaha after 2021

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With the news coming out on Saturday, talk of Maverick Viñales leaving the Yamaha camp was rampant in the MotoGP paddock.

Tipped widely to be headed to the Aprilia Racing garage for the 2022 season, Viñales’ woes on the Japanese squad have reached a zenith in their difficulties, shown clearly at the Sachsenring round last weekend.

The Spaniard’s experience on the Yamaha YZR-M1 has been mercurial, however, also shown clearly by this weekend’s result at Assen.

Nonetheless, following Maverick Viñales‘ request, Yamaha has agreed to put an early end to their current two-year contract.

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