EICMA: Two new Yamaha YZF-R1s!

Yamaha has doubled up on its new YZF-R1. Instead of trying to shoehorn all its technology into one bike, Yamaha has unveiled a ‘base’ machine, the R1, and another more up-spec version, the R1 ‘M’ with Ohlins electronic suspension, full carbon faring, data logging capability trough an App, stickier Bridgestone tyres and a full ‘Yamaha Racing Experience’ which presumably amounts to a track day outing similar to what the premium car brands offer with their sporty tackle.

Yamaha’s MotoGP riders, Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo, rode the new tackle onto stage, with the Italian nine-time world champion the first to make an entrance on the R1, which has a wet weight of 199kg. The machine has a new crossplane crankshaft engine, complete with titanium fracture-split conrods (a first for a production bike), a 10.5-litre airbox, titanium silencer, 17-litre aluminium fuel tank, LED lights, a TFT LCD and Yamaha Ride Control – the latter including traction control, lift control and launch control. There’s also a quickshifter and banking sensitive anti-lock braking.

Yamaha says the R1 is good for 200hp, without ram air, about 18hp more than the current YZF-R1. The latest manufacturing and weight-reducing technologies have been applied throughout the engine, reducing its standalone weight by 4kg.
The airbox is two litres larger than the current model’s, with fresh air flowing through the intake funnel and then through 45mm throttle bodies where it is mixed with the fuel and supplied to the combustion chamber.

As with the current model, this engine adopts the Yamaha Chip Controlled Intake (YCC-I) which connects the upper and lower portions of the intake funnel (long funnel) in the low- to mid-speed range, and then switching to the lower funnel only (short funnel) in the high-speed range.

There’s a new clutch, which is 19 per cent lighter and seven per cent smaller in diameter than the current R1.

The chassis includes an aluminium Deltabox frame, fully adjustable KYB suspension (the R1M has electronic Ohlins suspension) and cast-magnesium wheels. The wheelbase is 10mm shorter than the current YZF-R1 at 1405 mm, and the swingarm length is 15mm shorter at 570 mm. The caster and fork offset are the same as the current model.

The race-bred instrument panel is concentrated into a single 4.2-inch screen that adopts a fully transmissive Thin Film Transistor (TFT) liquid crystal display. The rider can select either a white or black background display. The display also features automatic brightness adjustment activated by a sensor that measures ambient light conditions.

For the display mode, there is also a choice between a Street mode with a priority on displaying information needed for riding on public roads, and a Track mode with a priority on information desired for racing or circuit riding.

The R1 has a six-axis Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), which consists of a gyro sensor (angular velocity sensor) that measures machine pitch, roll and yaw, and a G-sensor (accelerometer) that measures acceleration in the forward-backward, up-down and right-left directions. The signals from each sensors and a machine-speed sensor are processed by a 32-bit CPU capable of floating-point calculations at 125 calculations per second.

The technology makes possible the functions provided by traction control and the auxiliary slide control system. Slide control controls engine output when a sideward slide is detected in the rear tyre. It adjusts output to an optimum level based on data from the IMU. Other ‘controls' include lift (ie keeps the front wheel down) and launch (used for starts which stops the engine rpm from rising above 10,000rpm even with the throttle fully open) systems.

With the Unified Brake System, operating the front brake also generates corresponding brake pressure at the rear brake. The distribution of braking force is based on input from the IMU regarding the machine’s attitude and banking angle at the time of brake application. When brake force is applied to both the front brake lever and the rear brake pedal, the Unified Brake System functions to control the distribution of braking force between the two brakes, but when only the rear brake pedal is used, the system operates only the rear brake so that there is no “unnatural operational feeling” for the rider.

Colours will be blue/silver, red/white, black and black/silver.

Sydney Motorsport will host the world launch of the new R1s in February 2015 – but the Aussie public will be seeing it before that at the 2015 Melbourne Moto Expo, starting from 10:30am on Friday, November 28.

Price and availability for Australia are yet to be announced.