Exclusive Subscriber Content

EXCLUSIVE: Lin Jarvis Interview - Part 3, Rossi vs Lorenzo Round 2, Nearly Signing Nicky Hayden, And Looking To The Future

By David Emmett |

On December 31st, 2024, Lin Jarvis stepped down as Managing Director of Yamaha Motor Racing, the organization that runs Yamaha's MotoGP project. In the 26 years that Jarvis has been in charge, Yamaha have known incredible success. Eight rider titles, with Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, and Fabio Quartararo, as well as six manufacturer and seven team titles. Under Jarvis, Yamaha won the triple crown five times, in 2005, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2015.

You can read the first and second parts of my marathon interview with Jarvis here (part 1) and here (part 2). In the final part, he talks about Valentino Rossi's return to Yamaha after leaving for Ducati in 2011 and 2012. He explains the delicate balancing act that required, which the fallout of the 2015 season nearly upended. And he talks about the riders who came after, including Maverick Viñales and Fabio Quartararo, and the process of identifying talent.

Jarvis also talks about how Nicky Hayden got away from Yamaha, and the project he launched to turn Yamaha's failing fortunes around.

The Prodigal Son Returns

EXCLUSIVE: Lin Jarvis Interview - Part 2, Signing Valentino, And Rossi vs Lorenzo Round 1

By David Emmett |

On December 31st, 2024, Lin Jarvis stepped down as Managing Director of Yamaha Motor Racing, the organization that runs Yamaha's MotoGP project. In the 26 years that Jarvis has been in charge, Yamaha have known incredible success. Eight rider titles, with Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, and Fabio Quartararo, as well as six manufacturer and seven team titles. Under Jarvis, Yamaha won the triple crown five times, in 2005, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2015.

You can read the first part of this marathon interview with Jarvis here. In the second part, we talked about how he signed Valentino Rossi, and how Rossi saved Yamaha's MotoGP project. Jarvis also talks about the gamble Yamaha took signing Jorge Lorenzo when it looked like Valentino Rossi might go off and race in F1, the difficulty of managing that situation, and the backlash he faced in Italy for doing so.

The Rossi years

Q: First came the switch from 500s to four-strokes. Was it still Max Biaggi who left and Valentino came?

EXCLUSIVE: Lin Jarvis Interview - Part 1, From Bantams To Burnout To Biaggi

By David Emmett |

On December 31st, 2024, Lin Jarvis stepped down as Managing Director of Yamaha Motor Racing, the organization that runs Yamaha's MotoGP project. In the 26 years that Jarvis has been in charge, Yamaha have known incredible success. Eight rider titles, with Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, and Fabio Quartararo, as well as six manufacturer and seven team titles. Under Jarvis, Yamaha won the triple crown five times, in 2005, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2015.

Jarvis has managed some of the biggest names in the sport, including Max Biaggi, Carlos Checa, Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, Ben Spies, and Fabio Quartararo. He has seen the highest highs and sometimes, the lowest lows. And after a difficult couple of seasons, he leaves Yamaha as they are rebuilding for the future.

It has been a very long and storied career. At the second Misano round last year, I sat down to take a long look back at his career with Lin Jarvis. He spoke at length about how he got interested in motorcycles, how he ended up running Yamaha's MotoGP project, and more. Jarvis talked about dealing with Max Biaggi, managing Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi, and how difficult managing the fallout of 2015 was. Plus, he talks about missing out on Casey Stoner and Nicky Hayden.

The entire interview is to be published over the next three days. In the first part of the interview, Jarvis talks about how he got started, losing all his possessions in Rome, suffering burnout from pushing himself too hard, and managing Max Biaggi and Carlos Checa.

In The Beginning

Q: First of all, why motorcycles? How did you end up being involved in motorbikes?

Why Did Pecco Bagnaia Lose The 2024 MotoGP Crown?

By David Emmett |

Motorcycle racing is relatively simple to understand as a sport. The rider that crosses the line first wins the race. Riders score points for their finishing positions, and the rider with the most points at the end of the season is crowned champion. Sure, there's plenty of detail crammed in the spaces between those statements, but at the end, it's pretty straightforward.

So the reason Jorge Martin won the 2024 championship ahead of Pecco Bagnaia is also very simple to understand. Martin did a better job over the course of 20 race weekends, scored more points, and earned the right to call himself champion. Jorge Martin is absolutely a deserving MotoGP champion.

But as much as Martin won the championship, Pecco Bagnaia lost it. Because of the curious and deficient way Dorna maintain their statistics (you can't ignore the existence of sprint races forever), the official season statistics PDF makes it look like Bagnaia should have won the championship. Bagnaia had 11 GP wins, and 5 more podiums. By comparison, Martin has 3 GP wins and 13 podiums.

2024 Barcelona MotoGP Test Notes: What Was Each Factory Testing At Barcelona?

By David Emmett |

What are we to make of the Barcelona MotoGP test? For a start, there was a lot going on. With 6 riders changing manufacturers (Jorge Martin and Marco Bezzecchi from Ducati to Aprilia, Maverick Viñales from Aprilia to KTM, Enea Bastianini from Ducati to KTM, Miguel Oliveira from Aprilia to Yamaha and Jack Miller from KTM to Yamaha), 3 riders changing teams (Marc Márquez from Gresini to Ducati Lenovo, Franco Morbidelli from Pramac to VR46, and Pedro Acosta from Tech3 to Red Bull KTM Factory), and 3 rookies (Somkiat Chantra to LCR Honda, Ai Ogura to Trackhouse Aprilia, and Fermin Aldeguer to Gresini Ducati). Plus Aleix Espargaro becoming a Honda test rider after spending the last 8 years in Aprilia.

There was also quite a lot of new parts being tested, and the basic prototypes of the 2025 bikes for Aprilia and Ducati. There was a lot of aero, a couple of engines, an exhaust or two, and frames as far as the eye could see.

Barcelona Solidarity MotoGP Saturday Subscriber Notes: Bearing Up Under Pressure

By David Emmett |

Saturday saw a fitting penultimate chapter to the 2024 MotoGP season. Pecco Bagnaia knew he had to win both the sprint race and the Sunday GP, and he also knew that he was comfortably the fastest at Barcelona. So he deployed a brilliant qualifying strategy, in an attempt to elicit some help. Normally, when he leaves the pits during Q2, he is irritated when he finds he has a retinue in tow. On Saturday, he was pretty much offering his rear wheel to anyone who wanted it.

Marc Márquez knew that Bagnaia had to be fast, and was looking for the Ducati Lenovo rider's tail. On his second run, he latched onto Bagnaia, with Franco Morbidelli slotting in behind him, and the three of them took the provisional front row of the grid.

But Bagnaia also ran into the limits which will almost certainly see him come up short in the title fight on Sunday. Marc Márquez' time was good enough for the front row, but he was demoted to third by Aleix Espargaro. And Jorge Martin slipped ahead of Morbidelli to qualify fourth for the sprint race.

Jack Miller's Complete History Of The Ride-Height Device

By David Emmett |

It is hard to overstate just how MotoGP has changed in the last five or so years. Where once bikes were short and high, to maximize turning and pitch under braking, now they are long and low, with a focus on acceleration and power. A lot of the change has been blamed on aerodynamics, as the most visible difference between, say, 2019 and 2024.

That is certainly how factories first saw the role of aerodynamics, but that too has changed since 2019. "Some years ago, if you looked at the telemetry, you can easily understand that one of the most important problems of the bike is wheelie," Ducati Corse CEO Gigi Dall'Igna told me in an interview in 2022. "You cannot accelerate as much as you think because of the wheelie. So you have to try to understand what you have to do in order to reduce this problem. So we started to develop the wings, we started to lower the center of gravity on the bike."

Sepang MotoGP Sunday Subscriber Notes: Why A Battle For The Ages Happened At The Wrong Time

By David Emmett |

At the Sepang International Circuit on Sunday, Pecco Bagnaia won the battle and Jorge Martin won the war. When the race restarted after the horrific crash between Turns 1 and 2, which miraculously saw everyone walk away relatively unharmed, Bagnaia and Martin unleashed three of the most ferocious laps we have seen in MotoGP this year. The reigning champion came out of that battle on top, and went on to win the race. But Jorge Martin finished second and took enough points to be able to clinch the title on Saturday in Barcelona.

You might say that with a 37 points still on the table, and Martin's lead a mere 24 points, that the championship is far from settled. If Pecco Bagnaia can get some riders in between himself and Jorge Martin on both Saturday and Sunday, then he might be able to claw back enough points to win the title. That is correct in theory, but the Malaysian GP demonstrated why that is more of an idle hope. While Pecco Bagnaia had the measure of Martin on Sunday, the pair of them are so much faster than the rest of the field that there is nobody there for Bagnaia to put between himself and Martin.

Subscribe to Exclusive Subscriber Content