YAMAHA YZF-R1 ‘GIVES RIDERS A SENSE OF CONTROL’
2024 Riders and teams
Kyle Ryde OMG GRILLA Yamaha Ryan Vickers OMG GRILLA Yamaha Danny Kent McAMS Racing Yamaha
The R1 is really user friendly and it’s got power delivery that instils confidence. I’ve spoken to the riders about it and it gives them a ‘safe’ feeling. In some ways it’s the opposite to the BMW which when you ride it you’re like ‘f***ing hell!’
The Yamaha has a lovely spread of power but it’s not all good with the crossplane engine because that has disadvantages. One of them is the need to have a balance shaft because it has a huge rocking couple thanks to the way the engine works. No-one else has built a crossplane crank because it doesn’t make sense, but it made sense to Yamaha because they had excess power on the M1 MotoGP bike at that time. It gave them a better spread of usable power, albeit with less top end power. It’s actually a compromise in British Superbikes because they have to use the crossplane crank, which means they have to use the balancer shaft which loses them about 4% power at 15,000rpm because the balancer shaft has to be driven.
But at tracks in the UK it works because it gives the rider a sense of control. On balance it’s a good choice and one thing it does really well is go round corners. I spoke to Glenn Irwin and he said if you’re on track with a Yamaha you just can’t follow it through a corner. It’s mid-corner where it has an advantage so at a track like Thruxton where it’s all mid-corner it has a big advantage. And that’s down to the engine, the weight distribution and chassis. Even when you ride a stock bike it feels a bit flat and a bit lazy so you don’t think you’re going fast until you look at the lap time. Riders get on it and they like it. Take Ryan Vickers as an example, it’s been a game-changer for him and the same for Kyle Ryde.
‘It has been a game-changer for Vickers’