A lot of time has gone by since Wayne Gardner won the 1987 500GP World Championship or the 8 Hours of Suzuka, but that didn’t stop the Austrialian motorcycling icon from doing the rounds at the WSBK Portimao testing paddock this past week. Hoping on a variety of bikes, Gardner got a chance to see what WSBK riders were dealing with this past season, and gave GPone his thoughts on how each bike performed around the Portuguese track. Click past the jump for his thoughts and a video.
At this point it’s abundantly clear how hard the recession has hit the motorcycle industry, so it doesn’t come with too much surprise that some management types are having to take the fall for the down-turn in profits. For Yamaha Motors President, Takashi Kajikawa, the only silver-lining to the situation is that this isn’t feudal Japan, and no one is offering him a sword to fall on. Unfortunately though, Kajikawa will still have to resign from his position as company President, as Yamaha Motors prepares for a $2 billion loss.
There seems to be a shuffle going on in the Fiat Yamaha camp, as a slew of Yamaha’s engineers will be headed to HRC for the 2010 MotoGP season.
With most of the technical talent coming out of Jorge Lorenzo’s side of the paddock, Daniele Romagnoli, Lorenzo’s former team manager, may have familiar faces if he does end up with the factory Honda team.
Following the announcement on Thursday that Ben Spies will move to MotoGP in 2010, Yamaha now announces that it will enter the Texan as a wild card into the season-ending Grand Prix of Valencia.
25-year-old Spies will participate as a single rider entry of a Yamaha Factory Racing Team, using YZR-M1 test bikes brought over from Japan. The Valencia MotoGP race takes place 6-8th November, two weeks after the final World Superbike round at Portimao, Portugal.
This is a busy week for Yamaha Racing, with its MotoGP squad headed to Estoril and WSBK getting ready for its second-to-last stop in Magny-Cours. Fresh from the tuning fork brand is another announcement for its 2010 rider line-up, and this time around it concerns James Toseland.
Coming straight from Yamaha HQ, James Toseland, the former World Superbike Champion and current MotoGP satellite rider, will be headed back to World Superbike for the 2010 season, taking the place of Ben Spies who will be moving into Toseland’s now empty seat at Monster Tech3 Yamaha.
After first announcing that Ben Spies would stay in WSBK for 2010, and move up to MotoGP for 2011, commotion surrounded both paddocks that the American Superbike rider could in fact be bumped to MotoGP as early as next season. Today, Yamaha has officially confirmed what many had speculated: Ben Spies will join MotoGP via the Monster Tech3 Yamaha MotoGP team for the 2010 season.
MCN is reporting that James Toseland is set to make an announcement tomorrow (Thursday) regarding his plans for 2010. Toseland is expected to divulge that he and American rider Ben Spies will be doing an almost direct bike swap for next year. The plan has Spies taking a seat at Tech3 Yamaha alongside fellow Texan Colin Edwards, while Toseland takes the #1 seat at the Yamaha factory World Superbike team.
Come Spies or highwater, Italian food brand Sterilgarda and Yamaha have confirmed their continued sponsorship agreement in World Superbike for the 2010 season. This announcement does one of two things: it either 1) confirms Ben Spies’ involvement with the factory Yamaha World Superbike team for 2010, or 2) it means that Sterilgarda is content to race with Yamaha regardless of who rides for the tuning fork brand.
Yamaha is recalling 180 YZF-R1, FZS600, and FJR1300 motorcycles from 2005 for a faulty throttle position sensor. Not all 2005 owners need to fret though, as the affected bikes were manufactured only between October 2004, and April 2005.
Owners of the “ultimate street brawler” (their words, not ours) will be simulataneously pleased and disappointed to see the 2010 Yamaha FZ1. As we reported earlier last month, the 2010 FZ1 did not see the incorporation of the YZF-R1’s cross-plane crankshaft, and it also missed out on some of the R1’s other attributes, both good and bad. Photos and more after the jump.
For 2010, Yamaha has made some minor tweaks to the YZF-R6 that help bolster its midrange performance. By adding a 100mm longer exhaust pipe, remapping the the R6’s ECU, tweaking the variable length intake stacks, and revising the airbox, Yamaha has allegedly found more grunt down low, although the company hasn’t released exactly how much grunt they found with these improvement.
Continue reading to see the rest of the changes to the R6 for 2010, but to warn you in advance, you won’t see a cross-plane crankshaft listed after the jump.