Yamaha Motor Monthly Newsletter

Transcription

1 Yamaha Motor Monthly Newsletter The 2013 Season of MotoGP Spotlight: Road Racing Race Activities (1) January 15, 2014 (Issue No. 13)

2 Race Activities (1): Road Racing The arena symbolizing the passion and technology within Yamaha motorcycles The Communication Plaza at Yamaha Motor headquarters is full of ヤマハ発動機本社近くにある中田島砂丘で最初の試作車 memorable trophies, commemorative items and information telling YX15 の走行テストを行った時の様子(1965 年 8 月 ) the story of the company s illustrious history in the race arena. In October 2013, Jorge Lorenzo won the Japan GP and brought Yamaha its 200 th cumulative victory in the premier class of motorcycle road racing (GP500 and MotoGP). This monumental milestone crowns a proud history of premier-class wins by 28 Yamaha riders over 42 seasons since Chas Mortimer scored Yamaha s first win on its 350cc machine at the Spain GP, the final round of the 1972 World GP season. Nonetheless, this milestone is no more than a point along the way in a challenge that Yamaha will continue to pursue, and the victories are in fact byproducts of efforts toward a larger purpose. What is it that drives Yamaha Motor to continue competing with such fervor in the race arena? To find the answer to this question, we take an in-depth look at Yamaha Motor s struggles and achievements in road racing, a category among the many forms of racing that the company has been involved in the longest, and since its earliest days. The Formative Years: Racing successes spread the Yamaha motorcycle name and reputation for reliability Separating the motorcycle division of musical instrument maker Nippon Gakki Co., Ltd. (today s Yamaha Corporation), Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. was established as an independent motorcycle manufacturer on July 1, Released half a year before, the first Yamaha motorcycle, the 125cc YA-1, was clearly different from the models of other Japanese makers of the day. While their models stressed utility as work vehicles supporting the country s postwar economic recovery, the YA-1 stood out for its beautiful styling and light and agile performance. Nonetheless, it was greeted with ridicule by many dealers and customers with sarcastic remarks like, A motorcycle made by a musical instrument company probably sings do re mi. The YA-1 s initial reception wasn t a very favorable one. In order to spread the YA-1 name and demonstrate the excellence of its design and performance, Yamaha Motor founder and president Genichi Kawakami decided to enter it in what was the biggest race event in Japan at the time, the 3 rd Mt. Fuji Ascent Race. Yamaha Motor Monthly Newsletter 2

3 He gave the team a steeled and passionate command: You have to win! But, at that point they had only a month and a half to prepare for race day. For the team, with their nearly complete lack of knowledge or experience in racing, it was the start of a challenge that would require everything they could muster. The Yamaha Motor engineers worked tirelessly to enhance the YA-1 s performance while also engaging in the development of the company s next model. Although the staff in the factory were already hard pressed to keep pace with the manufacturing and shipment of the YA-1 to market, they made extra efforts to supply the race In the 1955 Mt. Fuji Ascent Race, the Yamaha team caught the eyes of the spectators with the striking contrast of their white cotton worker suits and the chocolate colored YA-1. team with large numbers of parts for their practice and race machines. Meanwhile, a group of rider candidates gathered from the national dealer network were at Mt. Fuji undergoing a rigorous schedule of training on the ascent course day in and day out. Thanks to the all-out efforts of everyone in the newly founded company working together, they succeeded in winning the 125cc class of this big race in their first attempt. Furthermore, with a series of modifications that boosted the original 5 hp output of the YA-1 to 10 hp, the Yamaha team managed to not only win but sweep the top four places in the 125cc class of another race in November of that same year. These victories not only spread the Yamaha motorcycle name and cemented a reputation for their reliability throughout the Japanese market, but also produced a quantum leap in the young company s technological capabilities. The First Venture Overseas: Competing in the Catalina GP opens the way to the US market True to his often spoken motto, It isn t a product if it isn t world-class, President Kawakami decided the time was right to turn to the world market four years after he founded Yamaha Motor. The first target he chose was the west coast of the United States with its world-leading consumer market. Once again, racing was chosen as the way to gain a foothold in the market. For the important first race, the Yamaha team chose the 8 th Catalina GP* (1958), held on Santa Catalina Island, off the coast south of Los Angeles. This was a big race where many American and European makers competed in front of some 15,000 spectators, and Yamaha entered its first pure race-specific machine, the 250cc YD Racer, ridden by Japanese rider Fumio Ito. Despite an early-race accident and machine trouble, Ito and the YD Racer managed to battle back and win the admiration of many excited spectators. Even with the 6 th place finish, the performance of Yamaha and Ito brought a lot of local attention to the Japanese team. Later in 1960, the Yamaha International Corporation (YIC) was founded as the U.S. sales company of Nippon Gakki. With this sales base in place, the Yamaha team mounted its next overseas race campaign at the Daytona GP* held at the Daytona International Speedway in Fumio Ito thrilled the spectators Florida. But, they were unable to win and it turned out to as he rode the YD Racer at be a race that showed the team how much progress they Yamaha s first overseas race, the still needed to make to really compete with the world s Catalina GP. best. Still, Yamaha Motor was strongly determined to enter the American market. In 1963, Yamaha Motor Monthly Newsletter 3

4 a Yamaha team was once again on the starting grid of the Daytona GP, this time with its RD56 factory race machine developed for World GP competition. Showing great concentration and a fierce determination to win, Ito succeeded in winning the 250cc class race and fulfilling the six-year dream of President Kawakami to build motorcycles that were truly world-class. *These were big local events at the time, but not part of the World GP series. The World GP: The mission and results of factory race competition MotoGP is the premier class of the world championships of motorcycle road racing (World GP) and where Yamaha superstars Valentino Rossi (80 career GP wins) and Jorge Lorenzo (50 career GP wins) compete today. Launched in 1949 as a series of six races held in countries around Europe, the series has grown to consist of 19 races held in 14 countries worldwide, from Europe, North America and South America to East Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania and the Middle East (planned 2014 schedule). The high-level competition in this series draws a total of around 2.2 million spectators to the race circuits each year, while an estimated audience of 330 million in some 200 countries watch the action on TV. Yamaha competed in the World GP for the first time in At a time when the vast majority of GP machines were 4-strokes, Yamaha developed 125cc and 250cc 2-stroke factory machines with exclusive mechanisms and took a team of five Japanese riders that included Fumio Ito and Yoshikazu Sunako to Europe for a memorable first entry in the France GP. Then in 1963, Ito scored a momentous first win for Yamaha in the 250cc class of the Belgium GP riding the RD56. The next year, Phil Read gave Yamaha its first season championship in the 250cc class, followed by another series title with Bill Ivy in the 125cc class riding a Yamaha V4 machine in These and other great successes paved the way for expansion of Yamaha s sales network and marketing promotions throughout Europe. But the effects of achievements in World GP went far beyond this. In the 1960s, not only Yamaha but also other Japanese motorcycle makers like Honda and Suzuki were also entering the World GP as strong new competitors. The result was an intensified level of competition among the Japanese and European makers that produced dramatic advances in the performance and speed of the factory machines, and made the World GP races more exciting than ever before. At the same time, the technological advances emerging from this competition in the race arena was rapidly being fed back into each maker s production models in ways that contributed to much-improved performance and product quality. A good example was Yamaha s widespread usage of a rotary disc valve air intake system on smaller displacement models like the YA-6. Another important advancement was the Autolube oil supply system that eliminated the need for premixing oil into the gasoline. It was subsequently Debuting in World GP in 1988 riding YZR500 factory machines equipped with the YPVS system, American rider Kenny Roberts won three consecutive GP500 class titles by Phil Read rode Yamaha machines to five World GP rider titles in the GP250 and GP125 classes (photo from 1968). adopted on all Yamaha models beginning from 1964, and became a distinctive technological feature of Yamaha s 2-stroke engines. In these ways, the mission and role of Yamaha factory race machine development has always been to continue making technological advances to win races, and then feed back that new technology into products for the general market. The Yamaha YZR500 factory Yamaha Motor Monthly Newsletter 4

5 machines that first debuted with rider Jarno Saarinen in 1973 would contribute to the world championships of riders from Giacomo Agostini and Kenny Roberts to Eddie Lawson and Wayne Rainey. But they also served as the development platform for the Yamaha Power Valve System (YPVS) [a variable exhaust valve system], aluminum frames, V-engines and other technologies that would be fed back into Yamaha production models. That mission remained the same for Yamaha s YZR-M1 MotoGP factory machines that debuted in 2002 with the M in its designation standing for Mission and the crossplane crankshaft engine and electronic control technology born from these machines have been repeatedly fed back and adopted in today s production models. Promoting Motorsports: Yamaha production racers supporting the World GP Yamaha Motor also made efforts to give more riders access to the sport of road racing by developing production race machines. The first of these was the TD-1 series of 250cc 2-stroke racers exported to the U.S. and other markets from 1962, where they made big contributions to the spread and development of local road races, raising the image of the Yamaha brand and promoting sales. From the 1970s into the 1980s, Yamaha production racers went on to play an important role in the World GP as well. With the changes in the machine regulations from 1969, new limits were placed on the number of engine cylinders and transmission gears allowable for the machines of each class. The new regulation made the factory machines of the Japanese maker teams unusable and caused them to suspend their participation in the World GP competition one after the other. The decrease in the number of strong teams resulted in a deteriorating level and number of machines on the grid, and a concerned Yamaha Motor took the initiative of developing new 250cc and 350cc production racers using technology fed back from its factory machines and proceeded to supply them in large numbers to actively support private teams. The results were immediate and many of the top-finishing riders were on Yamaha machines. They included Kent Andersson, who rode a Yamaha production machine to rank 2 nd in the 250cc class in 1969, and championship title wins by Rodney Gould and Phil Read in 1970 and After this, Yamaha would return to the World GP as a factory team in 1973, competing primarily in the GP500 class. However, Yamaha Motor introduced and continuously developed the now liquid-cooled TZ125/250/300 series production racers and strengthened its support of privateer teams. As a result, TZ series racers eventually made up more than half of the machines on the starting grid for each class. This established them as a standard model in In 1983, Venezuelan Carlos Lavado rode a TZ250 to win the GP250 world championship title. The starting grid of the 350cc class race of the France GP in 1980 was full of Yamaha TZ production racers. the World GP and thus made them a pivotal driving force in solidifying the place of the Yamaha brand in the World GP, both as a factory and production racer supplier. Until the 21 st century and the change to 4-stroke machines in Moto2 and Moto3, riders raised on Yamaha TZs from all over the world competed against one another and kept the excitement strong in World GP. Meanwhile, in America where races like the Daytona 200 for large-displacement, high-output machines were popular, the TZ750 2-stroke, 4-cylinder monster production racer won overwhelming popularity among riders in the 1970s and became a leading image in sales promotions in the North American market. Yamaha Motor Monthly Newsletter 5

6 Promoting Motorsports: Offering the chance to experience the joy of competition and improve skills Road racing is one of the sports motorcycles are used for. In order to keep the culture of road racing alive and growing, it is not enough to concentrate only on MotoGP at the pinnacle of the sport. It is also essential to nurture the middle categories and races such as national championships, as well as the entry-level categories where beginners first experience the joys of racing and begin advancing their skills. For this reason, Yamaha Motor has been building and marketing production racers and high-performance sport models in many regions since the 1960s. Yamaha has also contributed to creating interest in and raising the image of the sport of road racing by sending top Japanese riders to big race events in regions around the world, such as the Malaysia GP* and the Singapore GP* in Southeast Asia, and the 500 Milhas de Interlagos race in Brazil. In both developed and emerging nations, Yamaha has devoted efforts to organizing riding programs and schools using Yamaha products and one-make race competitions in active efforts to promote the spread and development of the sport. A good example is the YAMAHA CUP RACE series, which was initially launched in Germany in 1978 as a promotional event for the XS400 on-road production model but quickly spread to surrounding countries as well. The spread led to the holding of a European championship event in 1982 and the series went on to become established as one of the most exciting road race competitions for emerging riders. The YAMAHA ASEAN CUP RACE launched in 2003 and held in Southeast Asia is another good example of an event established on this same foundation and know-how. From this event, we have seen young riders work to improve their racing skills dreaming of emulating the achievements of past MotoGP riders like Norifumi (Norick) Abe, and current MotoGP riders Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo, and eventually go on to compete successfully in the FIM Asia Road Race Championship, the All Japan Championships and even the Moto3 and Moto2 classes. This unbroken tradition of road race participation and promotion of motorsport over the nearly 60 years of Yamaha Motor s history continues to be a cornerstone at the very heart of our corporate culture and philosophy as a motorcycle manufacturer. *These were big local events at the time, but not part of the World GP series. The YAMAHA ASEAN CUP RACE is an event aimed at promoting Yamaha s image as a sporty and innovative brand while also contributing to youth development. Photo shows the 2013 event. Yamaha Motor Monthly Newsletter 6

7 Message from the Editor How did everyone celebrate bringing in the New Year? I hope this year will be a wonderful one for everybody. I also hope you will continue following Yamaha Motor and reading our Newsletter. Over the course of 2013, we introduced the stories behind 12 of Yamaha Motor s business units and where they are today. The theme for our Newsletter this year is The Yamaha Spirit and Our Activities. Yamaha Motor will celebrate its 60th anniversary next year, and for this year s 12 issues of our Newsletter, we plan to explore the valuable corporate traditions handed down during these six decades. The subject for this year s memorable first issue was an easy choice: our race activities. At the time of our corporate founding, there were nearly 200 motorcycle makers in Japan. The four that continue to make motorcycles today are all makers that took race activities very seriously. We also have a new addition to our Paper Crafts series that can be downloaded at the site below. You can bring the excitement of the race track to life with your own hands! If you build one, be sure to take photos and upload them to this site: Our Paper Crafts website has a lot of amazing creations that are really worth checking out. While some people have made enlarged copies of the downloaded parts to create motorcycle models almost big enough to sit on, some people went the other way and reduced the size to about 25% of the original so the resulting model was the size of a coin. I might give it a try myself! ;-) Mariko Saito Global PR Team, Public Relations & Advertising Division, Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd Shingai, Iwata, Shizuoka, Japan TEL FAX saitoumar@yamaha-motor.co.jp *Prior to any use of the article(s) and photographs contained within this newsletter, please contact me. Yamaha Motor Monthly Newsletter 7