MotoGP | Yamaha presentation, “The goal is the world championship”

MotoGP Yamaha presentation – Today the Yamaha M1 which will take part in the 2018 MotoGP championship with Valentino Rossi and Maverick Vinales was presented to the public.

On stage, during the presentation, all the team managers followed one another, starting from the new president of Yamaha Racing, Kouichi Tsuji, who spoke both about the objectives for next year, obviously continuing to grow and obtain results, and about the partnership with the sponsors including the collaboration with Movistar, which has been going on for 5 years now. Looking back at last season he then spoke about reaching the 500th victory which was an important milestone, but the final goal will only be to be world champions in 2018.

Team director Massimo Meregalli then took the stage, with Lin Jarvis absent due to health reasons. These are Meregalli's words: “The tests were important, because we compared the same objects in different conditions, and at the end of the test days we were able to decide the basis of the 2018 bike, which Valentino and Maverick will have in the next tests. We need to confirm what we saw in the tests, then we will work on the electronics, so I expect an improvement in that area, last year we struggled with consumption and we need to work on this. Then Thailand is a new track but we have collected some information thanks to SBK and this could be useful to us. The manufacturers will have to choose 3 circuits to test on, but this will not affect. Compared to last year there will not be the possibility to prepare for the single match but it will not affect the results too much. We are convinced that we can fight for the title and this is the main objective for this season. I spoke to the riders during the break and they are fresh and ready for the season, next season will be long and they never stop training.”

After the riders, the president of Movistar, Luis Miguel Gilperez, also took to the stage: “We continue to bet on Yamaha, we have been in the MotoGP for many years and many riders have started with us. MotoGP is a critical point of our project. Movistar is a global company, and our company's ongoing commitment. The Movistar Yamaha team is the best in MotoGP and Movistar is the best communications company. I think the support we give to Yamaha is very important, but not only in the MotoGP. Sport is part of our service and we want to involve young people. We are reinventing the way of doing television and the MotoGP team is doing it in racing and I think they will be able to achieve excellent results. I am sure that Yamaha will confirm itself as the best team in 2018.”

The bike was then brought on stage and presented together with a video in which Rossi and Vinales improvise as rock stars. The main novelty in the livery is the change in the color of the Movistar logo, which has gone from green to white. The main colour, blue, has remained almost unchanged, with the addition of two gray stripes on the fairing.