The chimera of an engine MotoGP V4 at Yamaha was not new, and despite the fact that it was less and less possible Over the month, since the current technical regulations will end at the end of 2026 to make way for the 850c from 2027, the Iwata manufacturer finally surprises everyone by preparing a 1000cc V4 for the next two years.
We tell you everything…
The decision was made this winter, pushed on one side by the ex-F1 engineer Luca Marmorini and its brand Marmotors, already acclimated to MotoGP at Aprilia. For him, the figures speak clearly, and in addition to the advantages directly linked to the V4 (power, Big Bang timing, balancing, gyroscopic effect of the crankshaft, more broken trajectories, etc.), the grip allowed today by the new Michelin tires allows cornering angles of almost 70°, now incompatible with the length of the crankshaft of the Yamaha in-line four-cylinder, which is further extended by the central distribution drive, without mounting the engine too high in the frame .
The other motivation was not technical, but sporting, since despite or because of having only two motorcycles on the track, it was becoming more and more difficult to attract very high level riders, fabio quartararo, the star of the Japanese manufacturer even seriously starting to eye the Noale and making it known…
Seeing itself helpless once the 2025 season came, Yamaha therefore took the bull by the horns and decided to anticipate the study of the new engine initially planned for 2027, starting from a blank sheet to design a brand new V4.
Well, not quite from a clean sheet... because Yamaha has already built Grand Prix V4s, and a lot of them, starting with the 0W61 (pronounced zero-W) of Kenny Roberts in 1982 (after the 0W54 and 0W60 which were 4-cylinder square engines with two crankshafts), to replace the previous 4-cylinder in-line engines. Yamaha then kept this architecture until the 0WL9 of 2002 with the successes that we know: history would be an eternal restart!
In the greatest secrecy, a study team was therefore set up beforehand, in order to revisit the past to extract the problems of the time, the ideas which had motivated this change of concept, and to take stock of no less of two decades of V4 to analyze element by element the problems and benefits that this change in architecture had then generated, by seeing if some of the latter could today be transposed to the four-stroke.
It is the famous Japanese specialist magazine Haki-Lkon who discovered the pot aux roses and even released a photo of the prototype of the crankshaft in question.
There is no doubt that this is a real earthquake in the small world of MotoGP, with many questions, the two main ones being “will the 1 Yamaha YZR-M2025 be a copy of the Aprilia RS–GP? » et “Will this be enough to convince Fabio Quartararo to stay within the fold of the three tuning forks? ».
Obviously a matter to be continued very soon, the secret now being out...
