WHILST perhaps indicative of the way Yamaha’s 2019 MotoGP season has lurched between flashes of form at favoured circuits to forgettable and lacklustre race day efforts, the emergence of a 2020 Yamaha M1 in mid-season August testing in Brno still came as something of a surprise.
Dressed in tell-tale brand-less carbon-fibre fairings as if to demonstrate just how far along the path next year’s bike already is, it seems Yamaha has come to terms with ‘this season’ already and will now assign a chunk of its resource towards ensuring it is back at its best in 2020.
With development time already well on its side, Yamaha will have been delighted to see Maverick Vinales lapping competitively, while Valentino Rossi also returned positive first impressions as he ended the day in sixth position.
“It was a good day and a good test, because we worked quite a lot and we found something good. We also tried the prototype of the new bike, but sincerely we don’t have a lot of changes, it’s a different engine and a slightly different setting of the chassis.
“But these are just the first touches, and what we have is already good. After that we worked more with the standard 2019 bike.
“Some things on the 2020 prototype are good, some things need to be tested again in Misano. This is to be expected because it’s just a trial run, and we might have something else at the next tests, later on this season.”
Team Director Massimo Meregalli shed more light on the areas it has tried to improve on the 2020 Yamaha M1, particularly in the power and engine department, the most frequent critique to come from the four riders.
“Vale and Maverick made the most of it and tried new items, such as the new engine spec, as well as the tyres Michelin brought. They also tried the 2020 prototype bike. Valentino more so than Maverick, who preferred to concentrate on his 2019 bike.
“Overall, the rider feedback has been positive, so we can be satisfied with the progress, though it’s just the first step. At the end of the day, all Yamahas are in the top-6 and the times are similar, indicating we are collectively heading in the right direction.
“We will go over all the data that we’ve assembled here, both during today’s test and the last GP weekend. The Yamaha engineers will prepare the next steps forward accordingly.”
