MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

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

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?

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?

Since winning the MotoGP title in 2021, things have gone downhill for Yamaha. From winning races and consistently fighting for podiums Fabio Quartararo and his teammates have slid slowly down the order, to the point where they are now struggling to get inside the top ten.

The causes of the decline are hard to pinpoint exactly. A switch to a different engine character - adding horsepower at the expense of rideability - played a role, but the biggest factor was that the traditional approach of Japanese manufacturers was unable to keep up with the pace of development of the European factories.

While Ducati, Aprilia, and KTM were willing to bring updates to the track and try them with the risk they would fail, Yamaha and Honda were far more conservative, wanting only to bring parts that had been thoroughly tested and they knew would work to races. While Yamaha and Honda were making small steps, the European factories were progressing in leaps and bounds.

Yamaha were the first factory to recognize they would have to make radical changes to the way they are working if they were to start to close the gap to the European factories. In a process started in late 2022, led by Yamaha Managing Director Lin Jarvis and MotoGP Project Leader Takahiro Sumi, there has been a move to involve Yamaha's European arm YMR (Yamaha Motor Racing) based in Gerno di Lesmo near Milan more directly in the development of the M1.

At CFMOTO’s marketing event CFMOTO Day - Racing Man, I interviewed CFMOTO’s Director of Racing Development Mr. SU Zhen (苏臻) who has been part of CFMOTO’s World Championship effort since its genesis. Let’s see how CFMOTO got involved in the World Championship and their future plans.

Q: CFMOTO entered Moto3 in the 2022 season. When was the decision made within the company? How was the racing department put together?

SZ: Our CEO Mr. LAI Minjie (赖民杰) has had the dream of entering the World Championship forever. You saw that Mini with a ‘Moto3’ license plate at Zhejiang Karting Track during CFMOTO Talent Trophy. He got that plate way before we had a team. He wants a Chinese brand on the World Championship grid. Initially, my boss Ms LIU Xiaofang (刘晓芳) was working on the prep work alone. I was a member of the PR department at the time, which was also overseen by Ms. Liu. I’ve always loved motorsport. I’ve also studied in Italy. It was relatively easy for me to fit in into a paddock filled with Spaniards and Italians. So Ms. Liu invited me to the project. Actually, until about halfway through the 2022 season, it was only Ms. Liu and me on the project. Then gradually we invited more colleagues within CFMOTO who were passionate about motorsport to join us. We also hired external experts, for example, ex-racers to help us test the bike and help with R&D.

Japanese racing legend Yukio Kagayama, who has ridden for Suzuki for more than three decades, started collaborating with Ducati in the 2024 season. He set up and organized Ducati Team KAGAYAMA, and his rider Ryo Mizuno is taking part in the All Japan Road Race Championship with the championship-winning bike Panigale V4R.

Team Kagayama is also racing in the 45th edition of the Suzuka 8-Hours race with Mizuno, Hafizh Syahrin, and Josh Waters. And now, Paolo Ciabatti from Ducati Corse came to Suzuka on Friday to join the team. In the timed practice session, Mizuno set the second fastest time and helped their team proceed to Saturday’s Top 10 Trial superpole shootout. In the Top 10 Trial, Mizuno finished 0.118s behind YART-YAMAHA. Right after the Top10 Trial, we managed to grab an exclusive interview with Ciabatti in their team office.

Q: Ryo’s riding in the top 10 trial and your team’s performance so far this weekend is quite amazing. What do you think of your riders and Panigale V4R's performance?

Paolo Ciabatti: You know, we are very pleased with the results so far. We know that Panigale V4R with the superbike specification, like this one that we gave to Kagayama's team, is super competitive. We can see in any championship where we take part, World Superbike, American Superbike, British Superbike, also in the first rounds of Japanese Championship, the bike was showing good potential. Naturally, we needed to understand better how to use the Bridgestone tire because we never had Bridgestone on a superbike, but with the help of Bridgestone supplying us data, and the team, I think we came up with very good setup solution.

Now qualifying went very well, we missed the pole position by one tenth of a second, I think Yamaha is very strong, but Ryo Mizuno was incredibly fast, he put his best lap time in the top 10 qualifier.

After many long months of negotiation and analysis, the FIM and Dorna presented the technical rules for MotoGP due to be introduced in 2027. A capacity reduction to 850cc, a reduction in maximum bore size to 75mm, a ban on ride-height devices and further restrictions on aerodynamics are meant to reduce top speeds and give MotoGP circuits some breathing room, to slow the rate of progress.

Will it work? The history of MotoGP rule changes is that new restrictions tend to turbocharge innovation, as engineers try to find ways around the new rules put in place to obstruct them. So the task ahead of MotoGP's rule writers - Director of Technology Corrado Cecchinelli, ably assisted by Race Director Mike Webb and one or two other Dorna and IRTA staff - is to phrase the rules in such a way to prevent MotoGP engineers from driving a coach and horses through them.

In an interview I did with Corrado Cecchinelli for the Paddock Pass Podcast, he explained the ideas and concepts behind the new rules. Cecchinelli told me he defines the concepts he wants the rules to control, in agreement with the manufacturers who make up the MSMA [Motorcycle Sports Manufacturers' Association], and then Mike Webb turns those into the text to be included in the FIM Technical Regulations.

Pedro Acosta is a gangly, slightly scrawny figure in his bright GASGAS-red team clothes. He wears a near permanent smile that manages to balance exactly where cheeky ends and sassy begins. He looks like the teenager motorcycle racer that he is, like a kid fresh out of the Red Bull Rookies and ready to tear up Moto3.

Until he opens his mouth, that is. Then you are sitting across the table from a wizened old veteran, a man who sounds like he has a decade or three of racing and life experience to build on. "An old head on young shoulders," as GASGAS Tech3 crew chief Paul Trevathan puts it. Which is why KTM have fast-tracked the 19-year-old Spaniard into MotoGP, giving him one of their best crew chiefs to work with.

After three races, their faith in Acosta has been more than justified. The Spaniard has adapted much more quickly than even the most optimistic pundits had predicted he would. Battling near the front at the first round in Qatar, his first podium at Portimão, inherited after Maverick Viñales suffered a mechanical failure, and then a front row start, and a fourth and a second place at the Circuit Of The Americas. Acosta is fourth in the championship, and leading KTM rider. And he is only just getting started.

Pedro Acosta's debut in the MotoGP class is one of the most anticipated events of the 2024 MotoGP season. The 19-year-old Spaniard made a devastating impact in his rookie season in Moto3, got off to a tricky start in Moto2 - "In my first year in Moto2, maybe I wasn't 100% conscious about what was going to come," Acosta told me at Sepang - then cruised to the Moto2 crown in his second season.

Acosta is a rare talent, and is universally tipped to do well in MotoGP. He was quick in Valencia, less than seven tenths behind the new record set by Pecco Bagnaia at the Sepang test, and just over a second slower than Bagnaia in Qatar. He beat his teammate in both tests, and Red Bull KTM Factory Racing rider Jack Miller at Sepang. He kept an illustrious list of riders behind him at both tests.

A promising start, but testing is not racing. The man charged with guiding him through his MotoGP debut is veteran crew chief Paul Trevathan. The New Zealander, based for many years in The Netherlands, was previously crew chief to Pol Espargaro, and was partnered with Acosta by KTM, as the best person to nurture Acosta's immense talent in the premier class.

At Sepang, I interviewed Trevathan about how the process had gone so far. We had a fascinating conversation on how quickly Acosta was adapting to MotoGP, the process of getting a rookie up to speed in MotoGP, and building a relationship with a teenage MotoGP star.

　It goes without saying that the objective for the Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP team is to win back the title Fabio Quartararo conquered in 2021. To make that happen, Takahiro Sumi, General Manager of Yamaha Motor Co., LTD’s Motor Sports Development Division, manages the development of the YZR-M1 that Fabio Quartararo and Alex Rins will be riding for the 2024 season. Sumi-san started his racing career as a chassis engineer in the MotoGP paddock in the 2004 season, then accumulated a lot of knowledge and experience to lead Fabio Quartararo's 2021 world championship campaign, working as project leader. We conducted a one-on-one interview with him to ask about their vision and tactics to bring back the glory this season.

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Q: In the team presentation you had at the eve of the official Sepang pre-season test, there was an announcement that last year’s project leader Kazutoshi Seki moved to the technical management position for the test team and the previous test team technical leader Kazuhiro Masuda became the project leader for the racing team. Does swapping their positions mean Yamaha is planning to have more intense communication between the racing team and test team?