Rossi: ‘We still need to improve’

Valentino Rossi continues to emphasise that he and Yamaha Factory Racing are still in need of improvements ahead of his home race at Mugello this weekend.

Rossi is yet to win a race since returning to Yamaha at the start of 2013 and is now striving for a marked improvement at the Gran Premio d’Italia TIM.

"I am very happy that we are going to Mugello," the seven-time premier class champion says on Tuesday. "I love the track and I'm really happy to go back there with Yamaha. It is a track I really like and a good result is important.

"Unfortunately, we are still not fast enough so we need to improve, especially in dry conditions. We must work hard and improve the bike. The Mugello race will be difficult, but we will try to do everything to get the best result."

Although the Urbino rider is yet to stand atop the podium since the Malaysian Grand Prix of 2010, he claims a top three result would suffice this weekend.

"A podium would be really nice," he adds, having last finished on the rostrum at the season-opening race in Qatar on 7th April. "I believe that there will be many people at Mugello, so I'm happy, and the heat there is always good!"

Rossi has won at Mugello nine times across the three classes of MotoGP™ - more than any rival, which makes him the most successful rider at the circuit. His last Italian victory came in 2008, two years before a leg-breaking crash at the same venue.

Pol Espargaro ke Yamaha?

Yamaha berminat dengan Pol Espargaro? 

Cal Crutchlow mendedahkan kepada media tentang ramalannya bahawa Yamaha berminat untuk mengikat kontrak Espargaro untuk musim 2014 di MotoGP. 

Yamaha sebelum ini melihat dan menilai prestasi Espargaro sebagai pencabar utama Marquez musim lalu dan musim ini ditargetkan sebagai calon Juara Dunia ketegori Moto2.

Tetapi lain halnya dengan Espargaro. Dia mengatakan,

"Semua orang suka berbicara mengenai masa depan. Tetapi ini bukan waktu yang sesuai. Sekarang keutamaan saya ialah menjadi Juara Dunia (Moto2). Tidak ada ruang dalam fikiran saya mengenai hal itu(Pindah ke MotoGP). Kami akan memutuskan perkara ini bila pertengahan musim atau akhir musim nanti." - Pol Espargaro

Preview of Le Mans: Can Lorenzo Get Back the Momentum?

Three races into the 2013 MotoGP season, and the Yamaha Factory Racing team have been forced to tear up the script they had written for themselves after pre-season testing. Their original goals were for Jorge Lorenzo to win as often as possible in the early part of the season, building a lead at the tracks at which Yamaha is supposed to be strong, then defend that lead in the second half of the year. Valentino Rossi, meanwhile, was to finish adapting to the Yamaha once again, and get on the podium ahead of the Hondas as much as possible, to help build out Lorenzo’s lead in the championship.

The plan worked perfectly at Qatar. Lorenzo was untouchable in the race, and won easily. Rossi showed he still had it by getting on the podium and taking second, while the first Honda was Marc Marquez in third. This worked out even better than expected, as although Marquez is clearly an exceptional talent, the real title threat, Yamaha believed, would come from Dani Pedrosa.

Race two, at Austin in Texas, went a little better and a little worse than anticipated. That Marquez would win there had been expected, after all, the Repsol Honda rookie had been quickest at the test. But Marquez’s advantage over Lorenzo – and especially the gap from Pedrosa to Lorenzo – was much smaller than they had feared, putting Lorenzo within striking distance of the Repsol Hondas.

For Valentino Rossi, on the other hand, things did not go so well, the Italian never feeling comfortable on the bike, and finishing behind two satellite riders, Monster Tech 3 Yamaha’s Cal Crutchlow and the LCR Honda of Stefan Bradl.

Race three is where the plan started going horribly wrong. The Yamaha men arrived in Jerez supremely confident, after having dominated pre-season testing there. Jerez was the start of a run of Yamaha tracks, where Lorenzo and Rossi – and maybe even Cal Crutchlow – would really start to shine, and put some clear blue water between themselves and the Repsol Hondas.

It did not work out that way: the Yamahas struggled against the mighty Hondas, and Dani Pedrosa took a very easy victory. Adding insult to injury, Marc Marquez bumped Jorge Lorenzo out of second place, robbing the Yamaha man of the lead in the championship, and putting both Repsol Hondas ahead.

And now MotoGP heads to Le Mans, yet another track that is supposed to favor the Yamahas. Given Jorge Lorenzo’s utterly dominant win in the soaking rain at the French circuit in 2012, it is easy to think that the Yamahas should have an easy time of it here. The danger is that riders, teams, and fans follow the comfortable assumption that Le Mans is a Yamaha track, disregarding recent history there.

It is true that Yamaha riders have won four of the last five races at the track, with Valentino Rossi taking one win and Jorge Lorenzo taking three victories at the track. But the idea that Yamaha dominates at Le Mans seems to stem from further back in history then many people think.

In 2008, Yamaha took a clean sweep of the podium, with Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo taking the top two spots, and Colin Edwards, riding for the satellite Tech 3 team at the time, securing third. In 2010, they managed a one-two, with Lorenzo winning ahead of Rossi. But that one-two finish in 2010 and Lorenzo’s 2012 win are Yamaha’s total podium haul from the last three years.

Though they have only had one win at the circuit – Casey Stoner’s 2011 victory was even more convincing than Lorenzo’s in 2012 – Honda have had four podiums in the last three years, one more than that of Yamaha, while Ducati has been on the podium twice.

Those Ducati finishes are more reflective of the reality of Le Mans than the simple anointing of the French circuit as a ‘Yamaha track’. For those two Ducati podiums in fact belong to Valentino Rossi, and were two of the lowly three rostrum finishes he secured during his dismal two-year spell at the Italian factory.

It is not that the Yamaha is strong at Le Mans, it is very much a track at which riders can excel, rather than suiting a particular machine.

Valentino Rossi has been on the podium four times in the past five years; Jorge Lorenzo has been on the podium four times in the past five years; but Dani Pedrosa has only had a single podium at the circuit in all his time in MotoGP, a third place back in 2008.

Of course, the real star at the Le Mans circuit is the weather. The only thing that can be relied upon at the track is that at some point during the weekend, it will rain, and probably quite heavily. And probably not just once: the fact that Chris Vermeulen’s only victory in MotoGP came at the Le Mans circuit speaks volumes about the weather there.

The location of the track – halfway between Paris and the Atlantic coast, set in soft, undulating hills – means that it is right in the tail end of the spring storms that tend to roll in from the ocean, bringing wind, rain, and an arctic chill to the circuit. The wind, though, is good, as it means that the rain is blown out again just as quickly as it came in.

This year looks to be no exception, with some rain expected on every day of the race weekend, the big question being exactly when it will be wet and when it will be dry. The forecast at the moment – though by the time you read this, it may have changed once again – is for there to be a mixture of wet and dry sessions, with the mornings looking the most promising.

The race, meanwhile, looks set to take place on a damp, but not wet, track, making it the worst of all possible surfaces.

Who does that favor? Not Yamaha or Honda, or even Ducati or one of the CRT teams, the weather at Le Mans looks set to favor the team and rider who can get close to a usable set up as quickly as possible.

That, you would have to say, favors Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa, as the two men with both the most experience with their current bikes and the closest thing to a set up that works out of the box, as their victories at Qatar and Jerez respectively show.

On paper, Le Mans would appear to suit the Honda slightly better, as the track has so many tight corners followed by short straights, but Pedrosa’s mediocre record at the circuit must surely weigh against him.

That does not mean this race is Lorenzo’s to lose, however. If Valentino Rossi and his team finally solve the issues they have been having with braking, the Italian could be very close to the front, given his record at Le Mans. Likewise, if Marc Marquez and his crew get a base set up early on, it is easy to imagine his meteoric rise to the front of the MotoGP pack will continue. Given how quickly Marquez learns, and the depth of experience supporting him, it would not be safe to bet against him.

Then there’s the satellite riders. While Bradley Smith continues to adapt to riding a MotoGP bike – a time-consuming business, unless your name happens to rhyme with ‘Arquez’ – his teammate Cal Crutchlow will once again be chasing glory.

Crutchlow is balancing on the verge of leaving ‘best of the rest’ behind him, and challenging to belong to the ‘best of the best’. The Monster Tech 3 Yamaha man’s record at Le Mans is not good, having crashed out in his first year and run off the track in his second, but his main focus so far has been to stop making so many mistakes. If Crutchlow can put together a perfect race, then he might just make the breakthrough he has been waiting for.

The satellite Hondas are in a similar position to Crutchlow, with Stefan Bradl finding himself most under pressure at the moment. The LCR Honda man had a great race last year, finishing in fifth just ahead of Nicky Hayden and not far behind Dani Pedrosa.

So far in 2013, Bradl has failed to live up to expectation, and though were are only three races in, he will have to start delivering soon if HRC is not to start losing faith in the young German. Alvaro Bautista, meanwhile, must continue his lonely work on the Showa suspension, and hope that the recent improvements found will carry over to Le Mans.

And then there are the Ducatis. Le Mans is a track at which Andrea Dovizioso has always shone, scoring podiums here in both 2010 and 2011. The layout of the track helps, too, with shorter, slower corners meaning that the bike does not suffer lose too much time with the understeer which continues to plague it.

Both Dovizioso and Nicky Hayden will regret not having the updates developed on the ‘lab’ bike being tested by Michele Pirro, though, as the improvements which that design offers are mainly in corner entry, a key factor in riding the Bugatti short circuit layout at Le Mans.

But in difficult conditions, which look likely in France, the Ducatis are always quick, finding the limit made much easier when the conditions bring the limit in from beyond the very edge of performance.

Michele Pirro will also be at Le Mans, making a return after his wildcard ride at Jerez. This time, however, he will not be riding Ducati’s lab bike, but racing aboard Ben Spies’ Ignite Pramac machine, the ‘standard’ Desmosedici which Spies raced in the first two races of the season.

Those races aggravated muscles and tendons in the Texan’s chest, as he attempted to compensate for the weakness in his shoulder from surgery at the end of last year, and is the reason Spies is not present at Le Mans.

The other side of the Pramac garage is not in much better shape, with Andrea Iannone only recently recovered from surgery on his arms for arm pump, and his knee to close up a nasty gash he suffered in a crash.

Whatever the weather at Le Mans, the French Grand Prix is the race where Jorge Lorenzo needs to get his title defense back on track. His task has not been made easy, with the strength of the Hondas and the advent of Marc Marquez, but in France, Lorenzo needs to make a stand. Momentum – the great virtue of Yamaha’s MotoGP bike – is swinging away from him. Time to turn it around.

Yamaha planning 'crossplane' dynasty

As well as its promised ‘crossplane’ three-cylinder engine Yamaha is preparing a -parallel-twin and further variations on the R1’s four-cylinder crossplane motor to create an entire family of characterful new motors.

With its three-cylinder concept engine, revealed at last autumn’s round of bike shows, Yamaha’s intention was to carry over the “character of the crossplane concept featured on the M1 and R1 engines” and create an engine that markedly differentiated itself from the horde of inline-four-cylinder rivals.

To add to that differentiation, the production version of the engine will carry its own name and logo: ‘CP3’.

Documents lodged with trademark offices in Europe, America and Australia all match, with Yamaha applying for the ‘CP3’ trademark to apply to “engines for motorcycles”. It doesn’t take a huge leap to work out that the initials stand for “Cross Plane Triple”.

It’s unusual to see engines getting their own names, with Ducati being the only company to regularly brand its motors with protected trademarks – using terms like ‘Desmo’, ‘Desmoquattro’ and ‘Superquadro’.

While CP3 sounds less like a pizza topping and more like a Star Wars robot, the step shows how Yamaha wants to add character to the motor.

Intriguingly, further trademark applications filed at the same time show that Yamaha isn’t planning to stop with the triple: it’s also registered ‘CP2’ and ‘CP4’ – presumably for twin and four-cylinder engines based on the same thinking.

Crossplane, a refresher…In a ‘normal’ inline four-cylinder engine, the crankshaft throws are 180° apart. That means that two pistons go up in unison while the other two go down. It also means that twice in every revolution there’s an instant when all four pistons simultaneously come to a dead stop. Two at top dead centre (TDC), two at bottom dead centre (BDC).

Just a quarter of a revolution later (and at 10,000rpm that means 0.0015 seconds) all four pistons and their con-rods are travelling at full speed (around 60mph at 10,000rpm on a modern 1000cc four) before coming to a complete halt again.

So while it might seem silky smooth from the rider’s seat, the forces are oscillating wildly. This change in ‘inertial torque’ is sometimes blamed for causing wheelspin on inline fours.

A crossplane inline four like the R1’s solves the problem. Instead of 180° crank throws it has an X-shaped crank with 90° between the throws. That means that when one piston is stationary at TDC and another is stopped at BDC, the remaining two are hurtling at top speed in the middle of their stroke (one going up, the other down).

As they decelerate, the other two pistons are being accelerated. The end result is that the inertial torque changes cancel each other out. A 90° V4 achieves the same result, and you only need to look at MotoGP to see that it’s been years since a race was won by anything other than a V4 or a crossplane inline four.

So what’s Yamaha’s CP3 engine all about?You can’t overstate the importance of the new triple to Yamaha’s plans. While we’re still waiting for confirmation on the details of the first bike it will appear in, it’s already certain that triples will appear in multiple capacities and several different machines.

Yamaha’s says that “this advanced new light, slim and compact three-cylinder engine will shape Yamaha’s future motorcycle line-up.”

Yamaha is careful to steer clear of actually calling the triple a ‘crossplane’ design. While the crank throws of the R1’s four-cylinder crossplane engine form a true ‘X’ when looking at the crankshaft, end-on, that’s not really possible on an engine with less than four crank throws, like a triple or a twin.

Instead Yamaha refers to the triple as being “inspired by the linear driving power of the crossplane concept” and saying that the “crossplane concept of eliminating unwanted inertial torque… forms the basis of the new three-cylinder Yamaha engine.”

Exactly how the firm has achieved that is still a matter for debate, and will no doubt remain so until the final technical details are revealed later this year (see right).

What about CP2 and CP4?Yamaha hasn’t shown a ‘crossplane-inspired’ twin yet, but the CP2 trademark suggests a motor is in the works and Yamaha already has a couple of engines that could form its basis.

Following the crossplane logic, the CP2 would be an inline twin with a 270° crankshaft to mimic the smooth torque delivery of a 90° V-twin. And that’s something the firm has already created, using 270° twins on both the ageing TDM900 and the relatively new XTZ1200 Super Tenere.

The 270° crank on these twins does the same job as the R1’s crossplane crank, reducing the inertial torque to provide a smoother power delivery.

The CP4 trademark is presumably aimed at the existing R1’s four-cylinder crossplane engine and future motors. But Yamaha might be concentrating on the triples and twins, because while it has trademarked the ‘CP4’ acronym it hasn’t trademarked a logo to go with it, as it has for the CP3 and CP2.

MotoGP Le Mans: Rossi seeking to exploit 'Yamaha track'

Valentino Rossi is aiming to continue his FrenchMotoGP podium form at the Yamaha friendly Le Mans circuit this weekend.

M1 riders have won four of the past five French GPs, while the stop-start circuit has been kind to Rossi personally, with three MotoGP wins and nine podiums.

Le Mans was also the only venue where Rossi claimed podium finishes in both his Ducati appearances.

The Italian, who fought his way to an inspiring second place in the opening Qatar round, has finished sixth (Texas) and fourth (Jerez) in the events since.

“Le Mans is a good track for me, also because in the last two years I was able to arrive on the podium in the dry and also in wet conditions,” said the seven time MotoGP champion. “We hope to do the same and also better with Yamaha because this is a good track for the M1.

“In Le Mans the weather will be very important, because usually the weather is quite bad. It can be cold and wet so we will see. We will have to work well like always and try to understand the weather and the conditions of the track. We will try to do the maximum as always.”

While team-mate Jorge Lorenzo is set to use the newest Yamaha chassis this weekend, after further trials during the post-race Jerez test, Rossi still appears to favour the previous version.

"In Jerez, during the test we collected a lot of good data so we will face this weekend confident that we can do well," said team director Massimo Meregalli. "Le Mans has always been a good track for Yamaha and for this reason we will aim this weekend to achieve maximum results, there is every reason to do so."

Rossi starts round four holding fourth in the world championship, 18 points behind Repsol Honda's Marc Marquez.

MotoGP Le Mans: 'Lot of motivation' for Lorenzo

Reigning MotoGP champion Jorge Lorenzo will try and turn the page on his Jerez disappointment by claiming a fourth victory from six Le Mans starts.

The Yamaha star took pole position in Spain but was unable to match the pace of Honda's Dani Pedrosa at their home race - and was then bumped out of second at the final corner by rookie countryman Marc Marquez.

All of which means Qatar winner Lorenzo arrives at round four having slipped to third in the championship, but just four points from leader Marquez.

“Now we travel to France, to Le Mans, a special circuit which is a very different track to Jerez. I am looking forward to racing there. I arrive with a lot of motivation after the Jerez results,” said Lorenzo, who was left fuming by Marquez's pass but conceded he should have been more defensive.

Lorenzo joined his MotoGP rivals for a day of testing after the Spanish race, when he addressed some of the performance issues suffered in the race.

“Perhaps we expected better [at Jerez] but we struggled much more than we expected because of the extreme heat on the track. Fortunately we worked a lot on the test day afterwards to solve little problems. That session helped us to understand what the main problems had been on the Sunday.”

The #99 also used the test day to make a decision on the M1 chassis options available and, unlike team-mate Valentino Rossi, looks set to use the latest design at Le Mans. Lorenzo won last year's wet race by almost ten seconds over Rossi, then riding a Ducati.

“I've always had very good results at Le Mans and it brings me good memories. Last year in fact, I got a victory in the wet by a great distance over the rest. I rode a perfect race, without making a single mistake and in terrible track conditions,” recalled Lorenzo.

“I have won many times in France and think it's a good track for both me and the Yamaha M1.”

Having been unexpectedly beaten by the factory Hondas at Jerez, at track favourable to the M1s in winter testing, Yamaha team manager Wilco Zeelenberg is eager to gauge their Le Mans level.

“Le Mans is also one of the tracks that the Yamaha suits really well. I think it will be interesting to see what the level is on that circuit and if we are able to fight for the victory,” said the Dutchman. “That's what we were missing for the last two races and we will try hard to seek this in France.”