Masao Furusawa, Executive officer, Engineering Operations for Yamaha Motor Company gives his mid-season review.
We will give you a part of the review, by the most 5 important questions:1.
What’s been te biggest change to the M1 this year?“We have made many changes to the M1 compared to the 2007 version and we have improved it a lot; Valentino is satisfied with our work so far.
Of course the biggest change for us has affected Valentino’s side only -the change of tyre manufacturer.
After the switch we had a hard time learning how to get the best performance from the new tyres and of course we had no data.
last however year Valentino predicted that changing would be the right for him and he was right, although of course we weren’t able to predict how differently the tyre would behave.
”2.
Wat else have you changed on Valentino’s bike?“We have had to work a lot on the chassis setting and we have also changed the geometry of the bike in order to get a good balance with the tyre character.
since we moved from 990cc to 800cc higher corner speed is needed in order to get faster lap times and to win.
Therefor we have tried many different chassis settings in order to find the best of bike geometry, centre of gravity, rider position, wheel-base length, chassis stiffness and so on.
” 3.
Do you think that your development since the start of the season has been a success?“MotoGP bikes are not production bikes and that’s why I always say that Valentino, Jorge and all MotoGP riders are not human beings! Valentino has become more and more satisfied race by race and we have been able to find an ideal set-up for him that enabled him to win three races in a row.
Since then, Casey Stoner and his team have found new solutions that have allowed them to make a big step forward and now of course we know that the remaining races will be though, although we are still leading by 25 points after the excellent win in Laguna Seca.
”4.
What is the aim for the rest of the season regarding bike development?“Our competitor’s great performances is a big push to all of us to improve our M1 further, maybe even more than we did during last winter.
I would especially like to progress the electronic control system and the engine power.
At the moment there is no need to work more on the chassis, although this is something we will have to consider for next season.
Lately we have been experiencing some problems with acceleration on he exit of the corner, so we need to work to find better bike geometry and chassis setting alongside the development of the engine control system.
”5.
What is your opinion about the electronics in MotoGP now? Do you think the rules need to be changed?“This is a popular discussion at the moment and we are looking at the overall situation:do we need to change the rules? It’s true that many riders have crashed this year, including Jorge, who had a very bad series of crashes, and also Dani pedrosa.
The question is if these crashes have something to do with the current bike technology.
We moved from 990cc to 800cc to have safer bikes, but the new bikes have a higher cornering speed and this might present a danger for some riders; I think that we need to do something and the biggest issue is the electronic control system.
In any case, it is clear that we at Yamaha will have to develop a better and better ECS, in order to beat our rivals.
I still think that the M1 is best bike out there, although Casey has had a string of very impressive results.
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