MotoGP | Jarvis (Yamaha): “The inline 4-cylinder engine still has great potential”

Yamaha MotoGP – Lin Jarvis, Managing Director of Yamaha Motor Racing is working hard to give a competitive bike to Fabio Quartararo (in the photo in action in the Valencia tests with the prototype of the new bike, ed.) and Franco Morbidelli.

The weak point of the M1 is undoubtedly the engine. With the exit of Suzuki, the Iwata company's motorcycle is the only one left with the 4-cylinder in-line engine.

A philosophy that is carried forward despite the V4 giving greater guarantees, see Ducati, Aprilia, KTM and Honda. To give it more power, new engineers were hired. including former Ferrari Luca Marmorini. Here's what Jarvis had to say as reported by Crash.net.

Lin Jarvis statements on the new Yamaha MotoGP engine

“We knew we had to change our approach to engine design and development for the future. At an early stage, we hired Luca Marmorini and a team of Italian engineers. We have changed our organization in Japan by joining forces with this group with the aim of taking a big step for next year. The first thing they had to do was understand where we are. Because the package we already have is at a very, very high level. We finished second in the championship and were leading for most of the season. Despite the lack of performance we faced, we were game and competitive, so we need to understand exactly and precisely what we have, and then look at every single area with our experience and their outside perspective to see what we can do to improve that already high level . I'm not an engineer, so I can't really go into all the details, although I understand most of them, but there are a lot of areas and a lot of different things where you can work to get the most power out of an engine. We are more concerned about this than anything else, we need to look at every single area and try to optimize it for the future.”

Lin Jarvis Statements Unique Yamaha with 4-cylinder in-line MotoGP

“We decided to stick to this inline 4-cylinder concept. With the exit of Suzuki, we are the only manufacturer to continue on this path, but we have a lot of knowledge and experience on this architecture and in our opinion it is not the engine format that represents the limit. Of course, each type of engine has different characteristics. But the inline four-cylinder engine still has great development potential. This is what we are working on at the moment. We did a test after Misano, Fabio (Quartararo) and Franky (Morbidelli) rode the new specification and were quite excited. We never know what our competitors will do, but I think our development is definitely going in the right direction. The latest generation of the engine for next year will arrive in Sepang. So we still have a few months to develop and refine the engine. We need this engine power, Fabio needs it. This year he has driven very hard to be competitive with all his abilities, but it is hard work. Most people would describe Ducati as the most complete package in the field at the moment and when there are eight of them, that's really, really difficult. So we need to create a better package to give us more leeway and allow us to fight during a race.”