As Yamaha unveiled its 2021 MotoGP ambitions in today’s official team launch, the team management has expressed confidence at leaving the disappointing 2020 season behind it.
Instead, it set out bullish aims for the coming year, in which Fabio Quartararo replaces Valentino Rossi alongside Maverick Vinales in the works team set-up.
The 2020 season was something of an unmitigated disaster for the manufacturer – despite it winning seven of the 14 races, albeit with six wins coming courtesy of the satellite Petronas team and three of those six coming from Franco Morbidelli onboard a 2019-spec machine.
It was for the most part a torrid year for the factory machines, thanks to badly-engineered valves that saw a spate of engine reliability problems early in the year, a reduced rev limit to mitigate the problem and a lack of consistent performance.
Yamaha also suffered an extensive penalty in the teams’ and constructors’ championships after it was forced to unseal its engines to replace the components, and this penalty meant that it surrendered the manufacturers’ crown to Ducati – and thus remains without any kind of MotoGP title since 2016.
But with a year of development behind it on the 2020 bike and a development freeze introduced as a cost-saving measure for 2021, team boss Lin Jarvis sounded upbeat at today’s team launch about Yamaha’s difficulties being in the past, promising that the team can challenge at the front more consistently.
“Last year, Yamaha was the most successful manufacturer in terms of GP wins with seven victories in total,” the veteran Brit stressed, “but we missed out on the championship. Our goal for this year is to win the MotoGP world championship.
“With the arrival of Fabio paired with Maverick we have two title contenders on board and so we know what we need to do – win races and maintain consistency all season long. I believe with the improvements on the bike and the changes within our team we are ready to do just that.
“We were plagued by technical problems last year that showed up at the very first race of the season, even before the first race. And that was a problem for us to deal with. But the valves in the engines that were homologated and the valves in the engines that we’re going to run this year are the good ones. So we’re fortunate in that sense, that we start the year with valves that we know have no defect.
“In the process of managing the problem, we learned many things, as well, about how to manage the engine settings, performance settings, how to maintain reliability. Some of our riders did incredibly long mileage on the engines last year, because they were forced to. So I have no doubt in terms of the reliability of our engines this season.”
While Yamaha can’t make changes to its engines, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways in which they can be improved, too, according to Jarvis. As there’s undoubtedly still room to refine electronically in the incoming year, Jarvis is actually confident that the inability to bring a new spec of powerplant is a positive and not a negative for Yamaha.
“In terms of the performance level, the reality is, in terms of pure horsepower, we know that we have some deficit on our competitors, and this will remain the same,” Jarvis said, echoing the complaints of his riders in 2020.
“But I was just chatting to somebody this morning about how one of the advantages of the situation is that the situation stays the same.
“If everybody was allowed to develop the engine, you can develop more horsepower – but maybe your competitors can develop even more horsepower. So, in this situation, I think it’s fairly predictable how our performance will be, and let’s see anyway.
“I think we’ll do fine. We won seven races without having the same horsepower as our competitors last year, so I think we can do the same again.”
And while the development freeze might restrict what Yamaha can do in terms of engine development and aerodynamics modifications, Jarvis says that it’s still got plenty of tricks up its sleeves – and that new test rider Cal Crutchlow will be kept busy when bikes get back on track.
Crutchlow is set to make his Yamaha MotoGP return in the pre-Qatar test shakedown, in which he is to be joined by Yamaha’s Japanese test riders Katsuyuki Nakasuga and Kohta Nozane.
The pair weren’t able to give the bike a shakedown in Japan due to timeframe limitations, and Crutchlow didn’t travel there, but Jarvis made it clear this was of minimal concern.
“We’ve also been able to improve,” he continued.
“Although the engine remains constant in terms of pure performance, we could change many things on the bike. I’m not going to go into the details – we could tell you many things but it’s a secret at this moment. But we’re looking forward to the first two tests that we’re going to do in Qatar, because you never know how you’re going to be until you actually go up against your competitors.
“So these two tests will be very very important, we have a lot of things to test, and also we’re very happy that we will have Cal on board, working with us in these tests. He’s going to have a very busy programme ahead of him, so we have a lot of things to try. And I believe that we will be very competitive – but whether it’s our year or not, time will tell.”
