SAFETY IN NUMBERS?

Despite fielding a whole host of top riders, Yamaha still couldn’t keep Wayne Gardner and Honda taking the Championship in 87.

The season saw a total of eight riders on various iterations of the YZR500 (aka OW81) with varying levels of support for the riders in each team. If Yamaha was going for the carpet bombing approach then, sadly, it didn’t get them the result they were hoping for.

Honda’s Wayne Gardner had got the better of the lairy NSR500 and took the title from Randy Mamola riding for Team Lucky Strike Roberts by 20 points. Marlboro Yamaha Team-Agostini mounted Eddie Lawson would take third with Tadahiko Taira sixth on another Agostini-managed machine. Christian

Sarron got the Sonauto-Gauloises to seventh. Some good news for home fans was Rob McElnea on the final Agostini machine getting a creditable 10th place despite only finishing six races. Signs that there was hope on the horizon came in the form of Aussie Kevin Magee making a big impression in just the two races he took part in. A deal was set up for him via Lucky Strike sponsorship for the following season.

Still running the internal factory code of OW81, 1988s YZR500 came with a host of subtle improvements. Moving the two banks of cylinders further apart gave more room for the carburettors which, in turn, allowed for longer inlet tracts. The guillotine-style power valves of the previous years were swapped for the older style cylindrical types which facilitated better throttle control. Changes yet again to engine positioning, revisions to air ducts and a larger radiator saw the YZR benefit from better cooling which helped reduce any seizure issues. Three more ponies added brought the engine’s deliver up to 148bhp.

Technical innovations carried on with changes to the exhaust system. Previously everything had been compromised to various degrees, most crucially in terms of squeezing in four large expansion chambers behind the motor. There had always been a trade-off between gas extraction efficiency, power and ground clearance, with the latter generally winning out.

The new OW98 had a left/right asymmetric rear swing arm with a large upward arch on the right side which allowed the relevant exhausts to be of the optimum size. Yamaha had just invented the so-called gull wing rear suspension. Randy Mamola, Raymond Roche, Eddie Lawson, Didier de Radiguès, Tadahiko Taira, Norihiko Fujiwara, Christian Sarron, Patrick Igoa, Kevin Magee and Wayne Rainey, spread over four teams, would comprise Yamaha’s full-on assault of the 1988 championship.